Painting Wood Paneling

I have been dying to do something with this room

since we first moved in. 

See all that dark wood paneling?

See the dark carpet?

See the dark furniture?

Yep. DARK. The room is a cave.

It is also messy;)

 There is a window, but it doesn't get any direct sunlight. See? Cave.

This giant stone fireplace area doesn't help either;)

Home Depot had a paint sale last weekend; 50% off Glidden paint.I went and picked up 2 gallons of paint and 1 gallon of primer.

Before we painted there was some prep that had to be done. I am not a fan of prep work,

but my daddy always says:

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right!"

Grrrr! Stupid Daddy's Girl.

Step 1: Sweep walls to get off all the dust.

Step 2: Scrub the walls with TSP(our bucket was black when we were done...EEEEW!)

Step 3: Sand. We sanded just enough to rough up the surface.

Step 4: Wipe down walls with a damp cloth to remove the sanding residue.

Step 5: Prime.

When you prime wood paneling you will spend what feels like half of your life painting inside the cracks. Blah! My hand is cramping up in terror just thinking about it.

Make sure that you use the tip of your brush to get primer into all the knots in the wood.

Then roll a nice thick coat on the rest of the wall surface to help your paint stick.

Step 6: PAINT!

This is my favorite part:)

I love cracking open a new can of paint!

The color is Fresh Pineapple from Glidden

Isn't it just so sunny and happy?

This is me after 7 solid hours of prep and painting.

At this point I had not even finished 1 full coat of the paint, but it was 3 A.M. and I had to get some sleep.

The next night I started at 8 and finished painting by 3A.M.

I put in over 14 hours of labor doing this and my husband put in about 6, so that's over 20 hours on this one room and we are not even done! I still have all the door and window trim to paint and Jon is going to put in new baseboards and add some crown molding(which I will then have to paint).

I did 3 coats of paint to ensure good coverage. 

Here is a picture of the room right after I pushed all the furniture back against the walls.

I will take a better photo once the trim is painted.

I am linking up with some of these fun-tastic blogs:)