Decorating FEVAH
Book #10 - Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand, by Dana Kollman. Supposedly a book about the adventures of a real CSI. Not good. Click the link for my review.
So, at the House of Lori, there has been Redecorating. I'm turning Eric's old room into a guest bedroom.
It's been super fun. I knew I wanted to paint the walls. After eight years and three occupants, the walls were in rough shape. First I picked out the bedding, so I could match the wall color to it. This is what I picked. I got it at Target.
Then I picked out furniture. I bought two nightstands and a tallish dresser in a dark espresso brown finish. I also bought a brand-new mattress and box spring which are MINE ALL MINE. My current ones will go into the guest room. No headboard for now. Then the paint scheme. I decided to paint the walls the cool brown on the bottom, off-white on top, and the gray-blue as a stripe around the middle. I took one of the pillow shams to Lowe's and stood there for a ridonkulous amount of time matching it to the chips.
It really is true that the most work of painting is in the prep. There were a kermillion holes in the walls so I went at them with spackle first. Here's a Spackling Tip from Lori: if you have large holes, like from drywall anchors or large screws, plug them most of the way first with a wooden dowel or just some wadded-up paper towels. Too much spackle will shrink when it dries and sink a bit and you'll end up with a pit in the wall. Then I cleaned the baseboards and the corners and taped off, throwing up a pencil line where the stripe would go so I'd know how far up to paint. The brown went on very nicely, I didn't need a second coat (the darker the color, the more likely you are to need a second coat). I covered the spackled patches with Kilz primer (a heavy-duty primer good for covering stains, dark colors, etc) then painted the upper color. I thought I had a long-handled roller but it turned out that I don't, so there was a lot of up-and-down my stepstool. The walls look SO MUCH NICER.
Last night I taped off the stripe. THAT was annoying. Turns out just about nothing in that room is level. So if I measure up from the baseboards I keep getting different measurements. The best I could do was start at the door with the top of the stripe at 36 inches from baseboards, then make sure it's level all the way around. Tonight I'll paint the stripe. [Another Painting Tip - remove your tape right away. Do NOT wait for it to dry too much. If it's dry when you take it off, you'll pull up bits of your color with it. It'll pull off much cleaner when the paint is damp.] Then I can clear the room, vacuum again and clean the carpet with my awesome new Steam Vac. I need to give it time to dry because they're bringing the new furniture and mattress on Friday, so I'll want to move my current bed into the new room Thursday night so they can just put my new bed right into my room.
Then it's the fun part. Accessories and wall art. I'm considering some vinyl wall decals. I won't make any more decisions until the furniture is in place, though. That's when it'll be easier to see what the room still needs. Since I have dark dresser and nightstands, I'd like to find something non-matching, like a table, to use as a computer desk. Something cottagey and light, like a white-painted distressed table. I found a perfect chair in an antique store and I've found several candidate tables at various secondhand stores. Not buying anything else until the room starts to come together, though.
Now I'm having thoughts about more stripes, too. Right now it's going to look like this, from the bottom up: brown - stripe of gray-blue - off-white. That brown doesn't look super dark on the bedding but it looks pretty dark on the walls. Now I'm thinking it might look cool to bring the top and bottom colors to flank the blue stripe - in other words, put in a narrow stripe of white (like half an inch thick) an inch below the blue, and a narrow stripe of brown into the white. So it would look like:
----(top)----
off-white to the ceiling
half-inch brown stripe
one inch of white
four-inch blue stripe at 36 inches
one inch brown
half-inch off-white stripe
brown to the baseboard
---(baseboard)---
The beauty part is that if I try this and don't like it I can just fix it by painting over it. No worries. :-) Man, that's going to be a lot of taping, though. Happily the tape is (I think) one inch thick itself, so that makes it easy to put a stripe one inch above or below anything. Just tape the edge.
I love doing paint treatments like this. My wall art downstairs all has painted accent panels behind it. I'll likely do the same up here but it'll have to wait until I pick out wall art.
So, at the House of Lori, there has been Redecorating. I'm turning Eric's old room into a guest bedroom.
It's been super fun. I knew I wanted to paint the walls. After eight years and three occupants, the walls were in rough shape. First I picked out the bedding, so I could match the wall color to it. This is what I picked. I got it at Target.
Then I picked out furniture. I bought two nightstands and a tallish dresser in a dark espresso brown finish. I also bought a brand-new mattress and box spring which are MINE ALL MINE. My current ones will go into the guest room. No headboard for now. Then the paint scheme. I decided to paint the walls the cool brown on the bottom, off-white on top, and the gray-blue as a stripe around the middle. I took one of the pillow shams to Lowe's and stood there for a ridonkulous amount of time matching it to the chips.
It really is true that the most work of painting is in the prep. There were a kermillion holes in the walls so I went at them with spackle first. Here's a Spackling Tip from Lori: if you have large holes, like from drywall anchors or large screws, plug them most of the way first with a wooden dowel or just some wadded-up paper towels. Too much spackle will shrink when it dries and sink a bit and you'll end up with a pit in the wall. Then I cleaned the baseboards and the corners and taped off, throwing up a pencil line where the stripe would go so I'd know how far up to paint. The brown went on very nicely, I didn't need a second coat (the darker the color, the more likely you are to need a second coat). I covered the spackled patches with Kilz primer (a heavy-duty primer good for covering stains, dark colors, etc) then painted the upper color. I thought I had a long-handled roller but it turned out that I don't, so there was a lot of up-and-down my stepstool. The walls look SO MUCH NICER.
Last night I taped off the stripe. THAT was annoying. Turns out just about nothing in that room is level. So if I measure up from the baseboards I keep getting different measurements. The best I could do was start at the door with the top of the stripe at 36 inches from baseboards, then make sure it's level all the way around. Tonight I'll paint the stripe. [Another Painting Tip - remove your tape right away. Do NOT wait for it to dry too much. If it's dry when you take it off, you'll pull up bits of your color with it. It'll pull off much cleaner when the paint is damp.] Then I can clear the room, vacuum again and clean the carpet with my awesome new Steam Vac. I need to give it time to dry because they're bringing the new furniture and mattress on Friday, so I'll want to move my current bed into the new room Thursday night so they can just put my new bed right into my room.
Then it's the fun part. Accessories and wall art. I'm considering some vinyl wall decals. I won't make any more decisions until the furniture is in place, though. That's when it'll be easier to see what the room still needs. Since I have dark dresser and nightstands, I'd like to find something non-matching, like a table, to use as a computer desk. Something cottagey and light, like a white-painted distressed table. I found a perfect chair in an antique store and I've found several candidate tables at various secondhand stores. Not buying anything else until the room starts to come together, though.
Now I'm having thoughts about more stripes, too. Right now it's going to look like this, from the bottom up: brown - stripe of gray-blue - off-white. That brown doesn't look super dark on the bedding but it looks pretty dark on the walls. Now I'm thinking it might look cool to bring the top and bottom colors to flank the blue stripe - in other words, put in a narrow stripe of white (like half an inch thick) an inch below the blue, and a narrow stripe of brown into the white. So it would look like:
----(top)----
off-white to the ceiling
half-inch brown stripe
one inch of white
four-inch blue stripe at 36 inches
one inch brown
half-inch off-white stripe
brown to the baseboard
---(baseboard)---
The beauty part is that if I try this and don't like it I can just fix it by painting over it. No worries. :-) Man, that's going to be a lot of taping, though. Happily the tape is (I think) one inch thick itself, so that makes it easy to put a stripe one inch above or below anything. Just tape the edge.
I love doing paint treatments like this. My wall art downstairs all has painted accent panels behind it. I'll likely do the same up here but it'll have to wait until I pick out wall art.