Tag Archives: living room

  • fireplace paint

    We love our cinder-block fireplace. One problem –it’s yellow…and it shouldn’t be. More accurately, it’s smoke-stained white, but it amounts to the same. It doesn’t look too bad in this pic, but trust me on this. Anyhow, we set about re-painting it white. The texture of this cinder block makes it difficult to paint with …

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  • beam me up

    Post and beam construction is synonymous with Eichler homes, and similar modern home designs. This is what enables walls of glass and open living space. These ceiling beams are intended to be visible, and admired, as an architectural feature. And they need painting. We’d inherited brown painted beams in the living space, shown in this …

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  • arcadia sliders

    Our single-pane glass sliding doors are 1955 originals. Not great for efficiency, but good for a dose of nostalgia. Arcadia manufactured most, if not all, Eichler sliders –we’ve certainly seen them on models built ten years after ours. We have three sets –office (above, near), master (above, far) and lounge (below). We can’t afford to upgrade …

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  • halfway house

    Now we’ve settled on paint colors, we’re systematically working our way through the house, painting all the trim, beams and (eventually) ceilings. We also plan to paint the odd feature wall. During this phase, the place will inevitably feel disjointed. Above, our new Cityscape gray trim (inside) butts against Oxford Brown trim (outside). Likewise, the …

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  • gray side

    Remember my post about choosing paint colors? Well, we finally settled on a gray we liked, and decided to paint the indoor portion of siding, in our living room. It’s designed to be the same color as the exterior, to provide a seamless indoor-outdoor transition. We tested a patch on the right, with our sample …

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  • project orange

    I like orange as much as the next guy. More, actually, but Karen’s not so keen. So the huge wall of orange painted paneling that dominates our living space had to go…the orange paint, not the wall itself. It was painted pretty shoddily anyway, so I’m fully in favor. So, what to do with the …

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  • the heat is off

    Sacramento is hot in the summer. We just caught the tail end, but still managed a few days above 100º. It’s been surprisingly pleasant though, and way more comfortable than most 90º days in Boston. In case we forget how hot it is outside, we get a handy reminder. While (sort of) useful, this cheap …

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