dining room built in

 Our dining room makeover posed some challenges as I talked about in my last post, but one of the biggest challenges was this "Built In".

I have an idea why they call it a Built In.  I think they put those glass shelves up and then built the rest around it.  When I tried to take out those glass shelves to paint the inside of the hutch, I found that they weren't removable.  Nope, no way, no how.  I tried every way and angle possible and without breaking something those shelves were NOT coming out.

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 I almost surrendered to the brown, but just couldn't stomach it, so not to be defeated by whoever built this thing, I very carefully slid the shelves off their brackets and painted around them. It wasn't easy, but I just couldn't stand the thought of that^^^.

And after dripping paint on the brackets multiple times, I just went ahead and painted those too.

 After two coats of the Kilz oil based primer/sealer, we painted one coat of a latex white.

A word (or 118) about oil based paint.  I have a love hate relationship with it.  It requires lots of ventilation.  I think I lost a few brain cells painting on some chilly days.  I just had to bite the bullet and open windows and turn on a heater.  I didn't want to run the furnace, so I brought over a space heater and a fan and opened windows and froze my toes off.



What I do love about it is that if you drip, it wipes off easily if you catch it immediately.  I think it wipes off even better than latex--again, if caught immediately.  And I love the finish it leaves.  It's just better than latex imo.  But maybe that's the fumes talking...

When it boils down, if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way.

Paint on friends, paint on.