Glad that’s finally behind us. Painting the trim turned out to be even longer and more tedious than we expected, but it’s done — and it feels great. There were more than one happy dances: one late Friday when we finished, and another the next morning when we saw the room in daylight. Certain home improvement tasks seem to make you want to ugly-cry while doing them but happy-cry when they’re finished. It’s a wild emotional ride, but we never regret finishing the work. We’re just not eager to repeat it right away.
Experts typically recommend using an oil-based primer to block bleed-through on wood trim, followed by latex paint. We decided to skip the oil-based primer and went straight to semi-gloss white latex no-VOC paint (Olympic Premium from Lowe’s). A few days earlier some gray wall paint had accidentally gotten on the trim when we tackled the walls, and it seemed to cover well without bleed-through, so we took a chance. That gamble paid off — no bleed-through appeared — which saved us the hassle and fumes of oil-based primer. If we had seen bleed-through, we would have switched to a low-VOC stain-blocking primer, but thankfully it wasn’t necessary.
That said, the trim-painting process itself was grueling. It wasn’t especially difficult — I used a short-handled angled brush I trust for staying in the lines and painting faster than with a long-handled brush — but it took forever. I started around 10am on Friday and worked solo until about 3pm while Clara napped and John handled the blog and baby duty. By mid-afternoon I was exhausted and asked John to help during Clara’s second nap. He usually avoids detailed work because he’s the “big picture” person and claims fine brush control isn’t his strength. I was on the second coat by then, so I asked him to run the middle of the trim and baseboards with that coat while I followed, adding the second coat to the top and bottom edges that require more precision.
By the time we reached coat three it was around 7pm. After breaks for blogging, baby care, and dinner, we realized we’d need a fourth coat to fully cover the dark original trim. That was disappointing, but we kept going. It was past midnight when we finally finished and celebrated with a silly victory shot of our paintbrushes in front of the microwave clock.
Had we used an oil-based primer, this would likely have been a 1–2 coat job after priming, and we might have wrapped up by early evening. We chose the extra coats to avoid VOCs and that was worth the time to us, even if it meant feeling a bit tired the next day. For those following expert advice: use an oil-based primer applied with a brush, then 1–2 coats of latex gloss or semi-gloss paint, and tape if you prefer. For how we did it: I used my trusted short-handled brush and applied four coats of semi-gloss latex paint without taping, relying on steady brushwork. We used a similar approach in our first house and didn’t experience chipping or bleed-through over four-plus years, so we’re hopeful for the same durability here.
For the paint, we chose Olympic Premium “Base 2,” an off-the-shelf untinted white that reads crisp without a blue glow. We like the color and plan to use it for the rest of the trim around the house when we have the energy to tackle that in the future.
About the beams: we left them natural at first to be sure we didn’t prefer them that way — and we don’t. Now that the trim is painted, we’ve decided to either stain or paint the beams a deeper gray to add richness and dimension. The ceiling fans will be replaced, too. To imagine the look, picture the beams in a deeper gray that adds contrast and drama without feeling heavy, especially since our ceilings are standard 8-foot height. We’ll balance that look with a large charcoal sectional to ground the room and then layer in bold colors via curtains, art, rugs, and accessories.
For a little perspective, here’s what the space looked like when we moved in a bit over a month ago:
Change is good.