Painting Crown Molding

Our living room started out with weird colors.  Bright yellow walls, and this weird beige crown molding, and oaky mantle.

Before we moved in, we painted the walls a neutral, Glidden's White Sand.  A few weeks later, I painted the mantle a crisp white.  Things were looking more up to date, but that dingy crown molding has been bugging me for almost a year now.  So I finally got around to painting it.

You can see in this before shot how drab the trim is with the white mantle below.  It almost fades into the wall and ceiling, which defeats the whole purpose of having trim!

My after shot isn't that great, but at least the molding is white.  I used the same left over paint as the mantle, Behr's Popped Corn in semi-gloss.

Last Saturday, my husband was home from working the night shift and in the afternoon took the baby to go have a nap.  In the meantime, this wild thing {wearing old Halloween costume} fell asleep on the couch, which is rare for him to take a nap.  So I was all alone for a while!  I decided to whip it out.

I watched this tutorial on how to cut-in and paint trim so you don't have to tape.  That saved me a lot of time, just using an angled brush and being careful.  The first coat for one room took me 1.5 hours.  Monday I did the second coat in less than an hour.  A pretty quick painting project, I didn't need to tape or even get out the drop cloths or move furniture.  The difference is huge to me and I wish I'd just done it months ago!

It makes such a nice crisp border, rather than the muted slop from before.

They also had these copper painted lights in front of the mantle.  I don't know why you'd want to paint your recessed lighting copper to bring attention to it, but I just popped them out, primed and spray painted them white and popped them back in.  Another thing that has been really bugging me, but was an easy fix.