Area couple amazed by newly painted walls

The dining room has finally been painted! Yay!! We're still sort of stunned by the change. Whenever I see the room I briefly wonder if I've somehow gone into someone else's house by mistake, and my husband keeps saying, "I can't believe we did that!" The final coat of glazing/ragging was a team effort and we're really pleased with the results. :D

Here are the photos: (backlighting makes the color appear darker than it really is)


And to see how it will (eventually) look with the trim, I set up some of the refinished baseboards here:


The colors we used were:
Ceiling: Sherwin Williams' "hyacinth white"
Wall base coat: SW "hubbard squash"
Glazing: 4 parts glazing liquid and 1 part SW "eastlake gold" (painted on as a solid coat, then blotted off with crumpled paper towels)

area walls slightly less lumpy

I am about halfway done skim-coating the dining room walls, and it's going pretty well.

I'm using the magic trowel recommended by steve. It is difficult to get each segment smoothed before it starts to dry, but I'm getting better at it-- hopefully by the final coat I'll be a pro. Even thinning the joint compound with our cordless drill seems to be working fine.

The other nifty tool I've been using is this drywall sander that attaches to my shop vac. The vac has a drywall dust bag plus a hepa filter that I'm knocking the dust out of a couple times a day, and it seems to be holding up well. So far the drywall dust hasn't gotten into the rest of the house. *keeps fingers crossed that this trend will continue*