We are officially in full-swing with the den now.  Whoever thought wood paneling was a good idea was a total weirdo.  Do people still like this stuff? It feels SO GOOD to paint over it!! Every roll of OBP I do over the stuff I silently say "take that!" in my head.  Brent spent most of the day yesterday getting the seams and molding primed with a brush and I went back today to finish rolling the primer on.  We splurged and bought odorless oil-based primer for this project ($5 more than the original Kilz) and it was definitely worth it! Here are some photos!!

All the cracks are primed and all the nail holes filled in and sanded!

Done priming!

 We are going to go back and prime the trim and the big window in the room- we thought it might be nice to take this one step at a time! It already looks better!! Now, about that BRASS (again, who liked this...) fireplace surround! The insert itself is so super nice-- really heavy and very expensive to replace.  It has glass doors and screens, and I really would hate to have to buy a new, better-looking one.  So of course, I decided to try to fix it! I started by taking off the glass doors (with my head in the fireplace getting covered in soot) and lightly sanding the brass so it wasn't so shiny.  I went to Home Depot and got some cover paper and High Heat spray paint.

In matte black

I covered up the brick as best I could, but quickly realized I couldn't get the sides of the insert sprayed well enough with paper on.  We are going to prime and paint the fireplace white anyway, so I thought it would be ok to just spray the brick on the sides.  The hardest part of this project was putting paper in the fireplace hole.  I'm not sure if we'll ever actually use it, because I think I will be forever scared of spontaneous combustion!! Here it is after 3 coats:

 It's hard to see it well since I haven't removed the paper yet and it's all over the brick, but talk about an instant transformation! It looks brand new.  Little did I know there is apparently "spray paint dust" that comes along with spray painting inside.  I looked down at my feet and this is what they looked like...

...so I tried to clean up the best I could! Also, since I was inside, you can imagine that this is what I looked like all day:

Gotta love (hate) those spray paint fumes!

But this was my beautiful spring view for the day, which helped:

One last update.  I got the handles that I ordered from Target.com for the laundry room.. What do you think??

We are heading to the beach tomorrow night for a little R and R for the long weekend, which I think we will both appreciate! Can't wait to come back rested, ready to tackle the den some more! Have a happy Easter everyone!!