Look at it this way: if this is the worst mistake you make in rehabbing your house, you are doing great.

My approach is if there is no blood or broken bones, it's OK.

Always start with sealing up the perimeter.

Roofs, windows, siding, doors, etc.
You need a weather tight house.

Then comes the hidden working parts.
Plumbing, wiring, HVAC, kitchen vents if you want them.

After all the infrastructure is how you want, you start hiding it.

If you want to preserve old plaster walls it takes longer to do work, but in many cases is not all that hard or destructive.

Plumbing and wiring can be fished through cavities without actually opening up the cavity at all.

PEX or Type L copper will likely be your friend.

If you're actually living in the home, it's understandable that the cosmetics came first.

On the plus side, all the prep work is what really takes time in painting. It is pretty easy (and cheap) to put another coat of paint on a recently painted wall.

The other benefit is having had the opportunity to assess the paint colour in the room! It took me years to really understand how the light works in our house with our needs, and what the best colours therefore were.

Karin L

Thanks, you made me feel better.

You're not the only one doing more painting than you need to.

We (my husband) painted our third floor twice. Large, open space, 10ft ceilings... Because the first yellow looked fine on one wall, two walls, three walls-- but then once on the fourth wall, the whole room looked like a lemon. (Of course he thought it was fine.) We also painted an entire hallway, only to later rip it out to move a wall.

Another note about paint-- our home's previous owner painted every surface he could reach, a different, vibrant color. And by vibrant, I mean blinding. And when I say reach, I mean with scaffolding and extension ladders. He was serious about the paint. We've been living in a rainbow here since we moved in.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Neon 1890 Victorian

I LIKE it!

VictoriaElizabeth

Looks like your POs have moved on to beautifying contemporary homes.

Hope this doesn't insult anybody, but that is my pet peeve - a house where all you see from the front is a big garage. That and when they turn the front yard into a parking lot.

Scarlett, at least you hadn't papered--paint is easily redone with not much cash outlay, since you did the hard part of repairs already. :)

Sounds like you didn't have to remove much paper--in my downstairs hall, I removed multiple painted layers to a depth of about 1/8th inch, but had only minor filling to do. Still have to do the area for the basement stairs--the same horror story since it is a continuation of the hall.

The bath upstairs had a sand texture to it, which I found easiest to cover over rather than try to fill or remove...although the trim isn't quite as deep as it was before.

Your comment on garages is exactly why I won't even consider a newer house!

Worthy-
That made me laugh out loud...

Love the exterior of the neon vic.
Diane

These days paint matching is not that big a deal. There are some companies that boast that their paint can't be matched, but but many times the match is so very close that an ordinary visitor is not going to be able to tell the diff. It sounds like you've been busy :)

Scarlett, no worries, this is the old house forum after all. Your pet peeve design is called a "snout house" (no really!) for the obvious reasons. They're basically big garages with an attached house.

Here is a link that might be useful: more on Snout Houses

I didn't know they had a name!

But ugly!

"If you're actually living in the home, it's understandable that the cosmetics came first."

Only if you like to spend the money and time twice for the same job.

Just learn to live with it temporarily, or do the job twice.

Scarlett- Lucille is right. You can either bring the paint or chip of paint from you wall, and most places can match it spot on.

I too dislike the Snout, but in February often wish I had an attached garage!

Mike

though not wanting to hijack this thread ... but why is a detached garage not up to code (based on Snout House link). I would think that a detached garage is safer since the likelihood of gas fumes, etc getting in the house is lower, and if there were a fire, it would be more likely to be contained in the garage.

It's not the garage that's the code issue, it's the layout. You can't have zero setback anymore, minimizing the size of the garage and house you can have on a subdivided lot. So, in order to maximize square footage on those smaller lots, they lay them out that way.

Scarlet I agree,I hate to look at a new house and the front is all garage.
You learn as you go in and old haouse restore..

I almost purchased a house a few yours ago that had paring in the basement.

The driveway ran around one side to the back, and the garage door went directly into the basement.

It ALSO had a single car separate garage in the back.

It was in very bad shape though.

All the receptacles had been cut into the 10 inch tall baseboards when electricity reached the house (it dated from the 1890s).

There was a huge amount of remuddling damage also.