Staining and Painting Begins

For a week of quarantine, quite a lot actually happened, which happily gives me fodder for several posts. Today I’ll focus on our staining and painting crew, Mark, his “Pop” Lee, and Luis.

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First, as Mark explained, they remove every cabinet door, drawer, and shelf, label them, and set them up for spraying. Apparently they spray all the cabinetry, add a clear coat, and then reassemble the cabinets. Finally, they cover the cabinetry and paint the walls.

By the way, for those who voted on which door style to choose in this post, we selected A. More simple with a craftsman meets farmhouse feel.

This means that we *have* to finalize our stain for the cabinets. This involved multiple trips to yet another paint store, where they would only allow one customer inside at a time, and on Friday, a trip back to Lockhart, TX for two more sample doors. As I picked up the extra sample doors, I told the employees at Dupert’s Cabinetry that I was being a bridezilla about the stain, to which Zach responded, “You only have one chance to get it right. And you have a LOT of cabinets if you get it wrong.” I found that to be reassuring and frightening in equal measure…

Finally, by 3 pm, John and I agreed on a stain for all the stained wood cabinetry. We also decided to leave the cabinet interiors clear coated only with no stain (this does not apply to upper cabinets with glass fronts). This will provide some relief from the warmer and darker exterior of the cabinets and make it easier to see inside lower cabinets.

Lee was also working on putting a gel stain on our exterior doors. Just to recap from a previous post, our exterior doors are fiberglass, meant to look like wood. And the exterior paint crew accidentally painted them the trim color. This really wasn’t going well at first (as seen above), until they decided to take the door down and spray it.

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Now we are getting the warm wood tones we like! And finally, we chose a stain for the yellow pine bead board for the great room ceiling.

The same stain on the great room ceiling bead-board will also be used on the wood of the various window sills, as previously mentioned in this post.

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Meanwhile, as John and I worked with Mark to decide stains, Lee and Luis were working on all the woodwork that was going to be painted, and not stained.

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The cabinets that are painted (technically, lacquered), are the laundry room, family bath vanity, and kitchen island. Mark explained that they prefer to use lacquer and not oil based paint because it’s more durable and dries faster. The “white” color, in case you are interested, is Sherwin-Williams 7008 Alabaster.

You must understand that John hates white. White kitchens, walls, carpet, etc. I suppose he finds it devoid of the pigments he loves so much in his oriental rug collection? But SW 7008 Alabaster is, according to Sherwin-Williams, categorized as an off-white with subtle undertones of greige/beige, which honestly reads more like a creamy and crisp warm white in both interior and exterior lighting. It is just “off-white enough” to not be super bright white and is ideal for a softer white look. I mean, if Joanna Gaines uses it on her Shiplap walls, it’s got to be good, right??

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There should be lots of photo-worthy pics this coming week to share! Until then, thanks for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby