A little paint goes a long way!

Monday, December 13, 2010

Ceiling fans...love 'em or hate 'em??

Sorry it's taken me so long to post an update...I'll spare you the details but as soon as I finished the big room redo--it was time for Thanksgiving and another massive project...my annual Deck the Halls O' Kurtz! You did read that correctly, the room is officially D-O-N-E!! And if I do say so myself, this room should have its own show! I'm going to get her an agent. Really. Any minute now, I'm sure Oprah will be calling. Or Candace from Devine Design. Or <<gasp>>, maybe my gay boyfriend Nate Berkus will phone me up to say he can't live without me to pal around with One. More. Second. (((sigh)))

I'd love to show Nate my bedroom in a purely platonic, gay boyfriend kinda way! I think he'd be so proud. Of course I'd have to blindfold him as he maneuvers through the rest of the house and that might just be enough to TOTALLY FREAK HIM OUT so maybe I'll skip the blindfolding and just take a few pictures, ummmmkay? That's probably for the best.

Well, as tempting as it is to just hop right to it and show you all the fabulous pictures and do a little "Move that Bus Mouse" game with ya, I need to explain the complexities and purely blissful details of each little makeover success (and fail) in the room so that you truly appreciate my neurosis thought process and attention to detail.

This room redo is a collection of little transformations. My goal was to reuse and repurpose as much as I already had because my budget was teeny tiny, nonexistent, had to sell things to get the money kind of budget.

If you've followed this blog at all, you know that I HATE BRASS. And I'm quickly developing a dislike for wood trim. Well, cheap wood trim. Some wood trim is kinda nice, but I'm missing my big thick painted wood trim in our old house. It just gives the perception of clean--with extra emphasis on "perception" especially in this house of little messy men!

I had several points of interest in my room that just had. to. go. For starters...the dreaded ceiling fan! Now, I'm not all HGTV-gotta-get-rid-of-the-ceiling-fan-in-every-room-or-I-might-hurl kinda designer. I like my ceiling fan especially when our budget planning doesn't accommodate air conditioning until say JULY! That's when my ceiling fan and I are buds. I just hated its color. I know, I know, don't judge a fan by its color--it was functioning and did a nice job without much noise. But when I'm lying in bed staring at my ceiling (yeah, like I have much time for that--but let's just imagine that I did this quite often ummkay?) I want to rip it down and blame the kids. Really. That bad.

I've also told you before that I'm all kinds of patient right? Yeah, we'll go with that. Anyhoo, I broke the number one rule of blogging and forgot to take a before pic of the lovely little whitish brass gem on my ceiling so these will have to do...






Now, in full disclosure...I'm not a real Rock Star, I didn't take this down myself. That's what my handyman Mike is for! Every girl needs a hot assistant right? ;-0) I don't do electric. Or power tools. Yet. Get me inpatient enough and you just never know!

So we took this down and dismantled the whole thing piece by piece. (And by "we" of course I mean Mike with me offering a tremendous amount of encouragement.)

Using my fav BFF Rustoleum ORB, I sprayed every honkin' thing with light coats being careful not to super saturate the inner workings of the fan. Then I used just plain old brown spray paint for the blades. At first I wasn't sure--Mike thought it looked a little like car primer! But when we got it together and put it up...

Voila!!!!



Ahhhhmazing!!!!

This is just the first installment of some other awesome transformations in the room...I hope to get to more posts this week!

Gotta run...I think Nate is calling. Byyyeeee!


4 comments:

  1. I have been hoping to this with my white and gold ceiling fan in my kitchen. I hate the fan (plus it is in the kitchen so it makes our food cold) but think it would look a million times better painted. I might be able to convince my husband to take it down and lets me paint it if I tell him this would allow me to wait a few years before I buy an expensive light to replace it :)

    Thanks for sharing. I now how something to show my husband to prove it will work.
    Stephanie at Full of Great Ideas

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  2. We did this to several of our light fixtures and ceiling fans before we moved from our old house. The buyers LOVED the light fixtures (little did they know!). Anyway, we thought they turned out so great, we're doing almost all the gold/brass fixtures in our 'new to us' house. Awesome job!

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  3. I plan on doing my family room ceiling fan as soon as school is out. The blades are already woodgrain so I just need to paint the ugly brass. We have similar shades to yours, but originally it came with those square glass ones (GASP!).

    One question: Do I need to worry about spraying the motor casing and getting paint on the inside? I don't want to completely disassemble it if I don't have to.

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  4. Hi Robin,
    I did not disassemble the motor casing. I just made sure to spray light coats. My casing had a nice foam layer to protect it from dust...and spray paint!
    Good luck!

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