The Plan and the Process

It was hard to know where to start. My mother-in-law went into a residential home soon after my father-in-law's diagnosis as he was no longer able to care for her. He visited everyday until he was too sick and would spend hours with her, his love for her was inspiring. He was so relieved that she was happy and was enjoying life at the home and the interactions with others. It weighed heavily on him to make that decision, but we feel that he was able to leave this Earth comfortable in the knowledge she was going to be ok and of course we make sure she is in his absence.

A priority was ensuring that she had everything she wanted from the house. My husband and his sister then went through the house deciding what they would both like to keep, what could be donated and what they could discard.

We needed to formulate a plan of what our end results would be and how he would achieve it. One thing we both agreed on was the orange pine needed to go. We wanted to bring as much light into the cottage as possible. I felt the wooden walls lent themselves to a Scandinavian styling, a fresh, light feel. 

Many of the window frames, internal and external needed some attention. We knew when painting over the pine we had to consider the knots that would ultimately seep through if we did not make sure we sealed them with either a specific sealer or a primer designed for the process. After much research we settled on Zinsser Bin primer. Before that could even occur all the knots had to be filled and sanded. We did a trial run in my husbands old bedroom, it was apparent that doing the ceiling was a step too far, thee overhead work was going to be too much for us to do. 

We had other considerations as well, the lighting was very dated, just a few bayonet fittings here and there and as there is no roof space, rewiring would be an issue. For this reason we decided that we would get the ceilings plaster boarded which would not only allow us to fit recessed lighting, it would also allow us to add insulation. This is a job we hired out. 

Despite losing some of the character of the ceiling beams we were able to retain the larger beams that ran through the cottage that can be seen in later pictures. The extra light this made in the cottage was immense!

We tried a number of ways to paint the boards on the wall from spraying to rollers, we found the best way was to use a paint brush, yes it was hard work, but the look it gave was much better, it also meant that it wold be easier to touch up with the inevitable knocks and scrapes it would get.

Three layers of primer were used to really make sure that not knots wouldn't bleed through, of course we won't know if that will be successful for a few years, but we figured now was a good time to put the effort in. Between each coat of paint more filling and sanding occurred, No More Gaps was used in between boards that had bigger gaps and where the boards met at a corner. It was hard work and although I did a fair bit of this, the lion’s share fell to my husband. I often came in and got the glory for adding the colours!

In the rooms we painted an off white colour it was very hard to tell where you had already painted, we painted two boards at a time and by the time we got to the end the beginning of the board had dried. I found using Post It notes a good way of know where I was going next. The coloured walls were much easier!

I was left to choose colours and had a lot of resistance initially, but then people began to see my vision and left me to it! Our aim was to get all the rooms painted and the window frames too. In the meantime I took measurements for blinds so we could get those ordered and we decided on flooring so we could get that ordered too.