Great room remodel

[kevm14]

I'm filing this under windows and doors. But the last major remodel was the kitchen in 2018, following the Great Driveway and Side Yard project of years prior. Now we just made another major pass having done six windows (plus basement casement), the big slider onto the deck and some odds and ends (gable trim boards, remove gable vents, remove rusty alarm speaker, patch cedar shingles in various places, patch clapboard near slider, downstairs bathroom vent fan new install, relocate dryer vent). Two of those windows were in the great room and we went with built-in grids.

The exterior portion of this phase is finally complete, after placing an initial material order like July 2022 or something. Yeah.

But now our attention has shifted to inside the great room. We have wanted to "do something" with the walls and "do nothing" was becoming increasingly unpopular. "Do something" options seemed to include drywalling the whole room or specific walls (and painting), or just trying to paint some or all of the lapped wood.

We seem to have settled on painting all of it, which is noted as very ambitious. I should note that this phase is anticipated to be 100% DIY.

I will post some pics but steps taken so far include:
- Wood putty to fill nail holes in new window trim (the two new windows - Paul used soft but unprimed wood to match what is there)
- Primed one window
- Primed Anderson 3 element bay window
- Did brush/cut work on one section of wall for oil-based primer, which is apparently the only way to avoid bleed through of the tannins and stuff (whatever those are)
- Tried two top coats of one color. Didn't like. Two more top coats of a color we do like.
- For all paint, we are going with one gloss level LOWER than normal. Normal walls would be eggshell. Going with satin. Normal trim would be....semi-gloss. Going with matte. Everything is pretty soft and porous and I don't need a gloss level showing all the imperfections.

I think the plan (which I will probably change) is to brush/cut the ENTIRE room in primer, top to bottom, before finally moving onto the roller. The roller is 1/2" nap due to the surface roughness and it takes a solid pint+ to prime. Starting and stopping is incredibly wasteful (and a pain to clean).

And now that I've said that, maybe we will target priming and fully painting an entire wall (like the west wall with the fireplace) because that's the wall you see when you walk in and will provide the best bang for the buck as far as simulating the whole project being completed. This means I should move onto the mini split side of that wall and remove the mini-split cover to prime the edges.

Oh also I scuffed, vacuumed, primed and painted sections of the ceiling that were flaking off. It looks WAAAY better and mostly good now. So it's already begun.

[kevm14]

The latest.

This is one coat of Zinsser oil based cover stain primer (I did do a second round of brush work which was darker than where I had rolled but not sure if this was needed). Plus one coat of Benjamin Moore Aura which is their high end paint.

Two coats of trim paint on the window casing.

Roman shades installed.

One coat of primer on the baseboard trim.

Next is probably two coats of the same white trim paint that I used for the windows, on the baseboard trim.

Oh, then I do need to do some touchup work in various places:
- Ceiling (just a couple spots)
- All around the window trim - I was intentionally sloppy with the trim painting and got some on the wall. I figured it would be easy to go back and cut back in with the wall color (easier than trying to just cut on the trim itself - the angle is why).
- After the 2 coats of baseboard trim paint I will go back and make sure the wall is good all along the bottom (no mistakes)

Then this entire wall will be done! This is the easy wall, I think. But the results are pretty great so I am motivated.