A Fresh Coat of Paint (and a Few Upgrades) Upstairs

A fresh coat of paint is often the most affordable way to update a space and make it feel more like your own. Nearly three years after moving into our second home, we realized we had never made any meaningful updates to the main upstairs living area.

The great room, exactly as we found it

Ironically, the great room was one of the reasons we chose this house in the first place. The kitchen flows directly into the dining room, which opens into the living room, and the space felt finished enough that it never demanded immediate attention. If money were no object, we’d push the entire back wall out several feet and completely redesign the kitchen—but that’s a future project. For now, we focused on changes that would make a noticeable impact without breaking the budget. After all, we spend a good chunk of our time in the upstairs living room:

Jinx keeps an eye on veteran Stella and brand-new Charlie as the monkey business unfolds

Each winter, my workload slows down a bit around the holidays, giving me time to tackle home projects. It’s the same window when I renovated the basement living room a couple years ago and completely rebuilt the basement bathroom last winter. This year, that downtime became the opportunity to refresh the upstairs.

Setting the Goals

The plan was straightforward:

  • Paint all interior doors white
  • Replace thin baseboards with thicker Craftsman-style trim
  • Paint the great room and hallway
  • Address a few smaller upgrades along the way

Painting Doors and Trim

I started with the doors, something I had plenty of experience with from projects in our first house in Apple Valley. Based on what I learned there, I skipped heavy sanding and instead used a Zinsser bonding primer designed to adhere directly to polyurethane finishes. It’s not pleasant-smelling, so all priming happened in the garage—but it sticks well and prevents future chipping.

After priming, everything was painted with Behr Ultra White semi-gloss. Removing the door trim also gave me the chance to fix a long-standing issue in one bedroom where the door latch never lined up properly. The door either shifted over time or was installed incorrectly, but once the trim was off, I was able to correct it—making it possible to actually close and latch the door when needed.

All of the door trim was replaced with the same Craftsman-style profile used in our basement renovations, helping visually tie the spaces together and giving the upstairs a more updated feel.

Choosing Paint Colors

For the hallway—and eventually the great room—we used Behr Mineral in an eggshell enamel finish. This is a familiar color for us: it was used in the kitchen of our first house and later throughout the basement in this one. After debating alternatives for the main living area, we stuck with what we knew worked.

Painting the great room itself was the most time-consuming part of the project. It took several evenings to complete, and since I don’t do this for a living, pacing was key. That meant using more rollers than a professional might—but the tradeoff is saving on labor, which always feels like a win.

While working in the upstairs bathroom, I also repainted the sliding door, replaced the hardware with a brushed nickel finish, and cleaned out years of built-up dust from the track.

Precision hammering, brought to you by Sara

What’s Next

With the walls painted, the next step is replacing baseboards throughout the rest of the upstairs.

Charlie (left) and Stella (right)

I was able to complete the hallway near the bedrooms and bathroom, but the office, bedrooms, living room, dining room, and kitchen will have to wait until spring while we rebuild the project budget.

Like many projects around here, this one isn’t finished all at once—but it’s another step forward, building on what we’ve learned from past renovations and slowly making the house feel more like home.

Thanks for reading!
-Mike

A New Addition to Our Christmas Lights: DIY Wooden Trees

For 2025, we decided to make a few updates to our front yard Christmas light display. Each year we try to add something new, and this time we focused on creating a fresh look for the yard while also improving one of our existing inflatables.

One of the biggest additions was a set of DIY wooden light trees. The idea came from a pattern I found online and was simple but effective: using 2x4s cut at various angles to create the outline of a tree, then stringing lights between the two sides. The cuts involved a mix of 45-degree and 22.5-degree angles, which made my miter saw incredibly handy for this project.

Once the frames were assembled, I stained them using materials I already had on hand. The bottom section was finished with leftover brown deck stain from sealing the deck earlier in the fall. For the green portion, I had a custom outdoor deck stain mixed at Home Depot. It’s an Olympic tintable base in a color called Forest Green, and I had it made as a sample — just enough for this project.

For lighting, I kept things simple. The larger tree uses a string of 100 green bulbs, while the smaller tree uses a string of 50 white lights. I built the larger tree first, starting with a 27-inch bottom piece. The three rows above it measure 14, 16, and 18 inches long. To create the smaller tree, I simply reduced each of those measurements by two inches. The lights are attached to the back using deck screws that I saved when helping my neighbor build a pergola many years ago.

To secure the trees in the yard, I used steel rebar that I had found in a piece of wood retaining wall in our yard after moving here in 2023. I drilled holes in the bottom of each frame, pounded the rebar into the ground, and then slid the trees over the top. This worked extremely well — they stayed solidly in place all season. When it came time to take them down, the ground was already frozen, but the trees lifted right off the rebar without any trouble. I’ll remove the rebar once the ground thaws in the spring.

Overall, we’re very happy with how everything turned out. The lighted trees added a nice finishing touch to the front yard and blended perfectly with the rest of our Christmas display. If you’d like to see what I did to upgrade one of our inflatables, click here.