Painting the Condo

Painting the Condo

Today is Saturday, March 28, 2015.  The painters finished up yesterday – on time and on budget!  They started on Wednesday with relocating the telephone, cable TV, and one electrical outlet.  I should note that the construction down here is all cement and brick – there is no drywall in the condo.   Everything required drilling into the concrete walls; therefore, we left that to the professionals. 

We couldn't be more pleased with the quality of the work.  The guys on the crew stopped only to eat lunch – no breaks, no slowing down, etc.  Talk about hard workers!  Truly as good as or better than painters we've hired in the States.

Our condo is about 1,600+ square feet.  The total cost of the work was $450 labor + $50 parts + $210 paint + $40 tip.   $750 total – an unbelievable deal, especially when considering the quality of the work.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we bought Sherwin Williams paint.  There is a lot of paint made here in Ecuador and South America; however, our painter strongly suggested Sherwin Williams.  Apparently, the locally made paints aren't the high quality that Gringos are used to.  We bought a total of 9 gallons – 6 for the wall color, and 3 for the accent color.

We weren’t able to bring home samples from the paint shop; therefore, we did our best to pick colors from the color wheel that we thought would go with the new sofa and chairs, as well as the existing bedroom furniture and bed linens.  Back home, this step always took us a lot of time!  

The existing paint was a pink-ish white with darker brown accent walls.  We opted for a much more contemporary, clean, masculine palate.

We picked “Aesthetic White” for the majority of the walls. Basically, it is a soft white.  For the accent walls, we chose “Tony Taupe.”   The colors are “current” SW paint colors that are still on the SW webpage.  I was thinking that the color wheel we saw was quite old!

 

Remember when I mentioned that the walls are cement and block?  Well, that means that the stucco finish over the cement may not be 100% perfect.  As such, we went with a flat finish.  It helps to hide most imperfections in the stucco.

The contractor is returning on Tuesday to hang some of the artwork (he has to drill into the concrete walls) and the new window treatments will be installed on Wednesday. 

Today, we took the bus into El Centro (downtown) to look for a plant stand.  We found one we liked at many of the furniture stores downtown; however, it was part of a 3-piece set.  We only wanted the largest (tallest) stand, and had no need for the two other smaller pieces.  We went into one shop that sold “Disney” and “Garfield” themed kids bedroom furniture.  I use quotes because I’m sure neither of those companies knew/approved of the furniture bearing their images!  Anyway, the guys there agreed to break up the set and sell us the largest one.  Tom likes the curved legs, and it has hand applied inlay on the top.  Looks good in the dining room! 

I’ll post pictures of the “before and after” as soon as the artwork is back up on the walls.

We’re still waiting on the two chairs to be made for the den.  We expect those to be delivered in mid-April.  Until then, we are using the sofa that was here when we moved it.  The neighbors bought it, and have agreed to let us use it until the new chairs arrive.