In case you were wondering, we are slowly (but surely) making progress on our winter house project (painting all of our trim white, and replacing our interior doors).  I’ve painted the trim in one bedroom (minus the closet), our downstairs family room and one of the stairwells.  The base trim isn’t so bad; it just takes a while to tape it all off, and it usually takes 2-3 coats of paint to cover over the dark wood. 

What I’m learning is that the really hard part is actually the doors.  Tom has been replacing the door frames and hanging the doors, but I’ve been doing the painting.  This involves priming one side; letting it dry; priming the other side; letting it dry; painting one side; letting it dry; painting the other side; letting it dry – and hope you don’t have to make too many touch ups!  I also learned after the first couple doors, that there really is a proper way to paint paneled wood doors with a brush.  It really seems to take forever, but we’re getting there.  I have four doorways painted now – just 3 more to go!  Tom’s been doing a great job with installing the doors/door frames – with only one head injury to date.  It was really only a little cut after a door frame fell on his head!  But head wounds sure do bleed a lot…yuck.  Let’s hope there are no more injuries as we finish!

I’m not sure how long it will take us to finish.  Here’s what’s left:

-          Painting the trim on the main floor (living room, dining room kitchen)

-          Finish painting & installing doors (8 in all – only 1 is completely done)

-          Painting trim in upstairs hallway & master bedroom

-          Paint second stairwell

-          Decide if/how to replace railings (I painted one stairway railing white, and realized that it didn’t really help it look any better.  Now, instead of a chunky, ugly wooden railing we have a chunky, ugly white railing.)

-          Decide if we’re painting in the sunroom (lots of railings in there…)

Sheesh.  Now that I write it out it sure sounds like a lot!  Thank goodness one bedroom and both baths were already done.  I need to finish by March, though, because gardening projects start then :)