Kids Bathroom: Painted

A few weeks ago I took the plunge and removed the wallpaper from the kids bathroom.  There is NO MORE WALLPAPER in our house!!!

But the white glue-covered walls weren't doing it for me either.

My Mom just spent a week with us, joining me at a few awesome baby showers, and helping us finish up projects around the house.  Painting this bathroom was on her list!

Nothing is ever easy at our house, and this was no exception.  The wallpaper had been installed before the baseboards, so Mom had to remove the caulk and cut away the wallpaper with a razor blade.  Then she had to re-caulk everything.  I hate these little projects that take up time and don't have awesome-looking results, but it had to be done!

Instead of wiping the wallpaper glue off the walls, we decided to seal it in with oil-based primer.  It's pretty stinky, but it did the job!  If we had skipped the primer, there was a good chance the glue would reactivate with latex paint, causing bubbles.

Finally came the paint!  We used Sherwin Williams Emerald line of paint in matte finish, in the color Quietude.  I liked this color because it was soothing and pretty, could be mixed with jazzy colors like yellow, and played well with the vanity.  I also felt like it was a safe choice since it was on the same card as Rainwashed, a color we've used in three rooms in our house.

Let's see some before and after's!

What a difference!

It looks much cleaner and brighter.  The vanity top doesn't read as tan as it did before, and now the tub looks white instead of a dull grey.  

Mom also spray painted the cabinet mirror.  She removed it, taped off the edges, and gave it two coats of silver spray paint we had hanging out in the basement.  It was a dull gold before, and an easy change, but made the mirror really blend with the new paint color.

So you might be asking, what's the deal with the vanity?  We're not in love with the countertop, but it's in good shape and not overly offensive.  I priced out replacing it with natural stone, like granite or marble, but even using a remnant for this tiny space came to a cost of over $700!  We decided the original counter was just fine, and chose a wall color that would go with it.

The next project in here is restaining the vanity!  Stay tuned!



You might also be interested in these posts:

Kids Bathroom: Wallpaper Free!
Half-Bath Remodel

Bonnie Projects

Dining Room Reveal

It's finally done!!!  Back in August we started working on the dining room, and now I can finally say it's complete :)

Remember how it started off?  Dark, dated, and messy.  We had already updated the chandelier from the brass one left by the previous homeowners, but the paint wasn't meshing with our other rooms, there was nowhere to put stuff, and the space simply didn't have personality.

I'll give you the rest of the tour, then explain how we got from A to B!

We were so lost with how to approach this room that we hired Jackie of Teal & Lime Interiors to make a mood board and source list for us to get us started.  She gave us lots of inspiration and some great ideas.  This room wouldn't be like it is without her help.

I painted the walls a cool neutral called Kestrel White.  It's more interesting than flat white, and meshes really well with the other colors on this level.  I also gave the baseboards a fresh coat of white paint.

Next I painted the built-in cabinets white.  I was worried the tile on top would clash, but it actually looks pretty good!

With Jackie's suggestions, I bought a small "buffet" to hold laptops, magazines, and the other stuff that was littering the dining room.  I also got those great lamps (so affordable!), the round mirror, the brass duck bookends, and the striped rug from her source list.  The rug was too long, so I came up with an easy way to shorten it.

I found the low-profile wine rack while shopping in Capitol Hill.  It holds the bottles sideways, so it hardly takes up any room at all.

We brought our family to dinner by getting a large print framed - it's a photo of both our extended families, taken a few days before our wedding.  Everyone is wearing coral and navy, and this was the inspiration for the room.

To complete the look, I made a reversible table runner for the dining table.  Check back later this week for the tutorial!

We are so happy with how this room turned out!  It's light, bright, and offers the functionality we needed.  It goes great with the adjacent kitchen and living room, and finally feels like "us".




You might also be interested in these posts:
We hired a designer
Painting the dining room
Painting the built-ins
A shoe cabinet as a buffet
How to shorten a flat-weave rug
How to make a reversible table runner (coming soon!)

Bonnie Projects

One last reason why I hate wallpaper

Oh wallpaper, how I loathe thee.

First, you're hideous
Then, you firmly stick to the wall, coming off only in minute pieces of confetti
Next you must be scrubbed to remove traces of glue
And finally, your glue is never really gone, so you must be covered in oil-based primer


I talked to a handful of experts, and it turns out that even though I scrubbed the heck out of the walls to get all the wallpaper glue off, it's still a good idea to prime before you paint.

Wallpaper glue can become reactivated by water-based paints like the usual latex you'd use on walls, and cause bubbling and peeling and all sorts of mess I don't want to deal with.

Priming the walls with an oil-based primer seals in the glue and saves the day.  But nobody warns you that it smells horrible.

I bought the "odorless" oil-based primer Sherwin Williams offers, and went to town.  Coverage was OK, I suppose, but the smell was AWFUL!!!  Odorless, my foot!  We aired out the room for days and it still lingers.  Bleh.  Hopefully the normal latex wall paint will seal in the odor?

Anyways, now it's done and ready for pretty, zero-VOC paint.  Thankfully it'll be a while before we're hosting guests in here, so it'll have plenty of time to air out.

Room for Color

Hi y'all, I have fun news!

I submitted our living room in Apartment Therapy's Room For Color Competition, and it was accepted!  While I may not win, at least I know my hard work can hang with some other really pretty places :)

Want to help me out?  Please go vote!  I can win some pretty cool stuff!  And notoriety, which is better anyways.

Thanks!

Dining Room Update: Painting the Built-ins

We're still loving the new color in the dining room.  A light, warm neutral was just what the space needed!  That said, the fresh new paint and white trim look so great that they make the built-in cabinets look dated and dingy.

 

We'd been thinking about painting the cabinets white, and the new wall color pushed us to finally go ahead and do it.

I started by removing the hardware and scrubbing everything to get it clean.  Then I sanded the trim and cabinets to create a rough surface for the paint to stick to.  Next I filled in any holes and divots with wood putty then did a final sanding.  For the final prep, I wiped everything down with a damp cloth.

I taped off things that didn't need paint - namely, the quarter-round that matches the floor, the grout and tiles, and the inside of the cabinets.

There was a little space between the top and the cabinets, so I filled it with paintable caulk.  Thanks to my husband for grabbing the camera!

Then I got to painting!

First Coat

Second Coat

First Coat

Second Coat

It took four coats to get decent coverage!!!  Thankfully the piece is small, so it didn't take all that long.

Meanwhile I got to work on the doors.  I started with the backs, which just like the cabinets took four coats of paint to get good coverage.

Before

Working on the first coat

Coat #1 done!

Coat #2 done!

After the backs had fully cured, I flipped them over and painted the fronts.  I did five coats of paint on the cabinet fronts, and I'm still not sure I'm happy with the results.

I gave them a full day to dry, but figured they could fully cure while hanging (which also gets them off my floor), so I went ahead and hung them back up!

The fresh bright paint makes such a difference!  The cabinets look much more modern, and the white paint helps you fully appreciate all that fancy beveling on the doors. {Thanks old owners, for choosing high-end cabinets!}

 

You're supposed to be looking at the tile, but aren't my "thanks for painting for a week straight" flowers from my husband pretty???

Jury's still out on whether the tile will stay, but for now I'm ready to forge ahead and finish decorating this room!  What do you think?  Should the tile stay or go?


You might also be interested in these posts:

Redecorating the Dining Room
Painting the Dining Room

Bonnie Projects

Dining Room Update: Painted Walls + Trim

Jeez louise!  Having a day job really gets in the way of completing a project in a reasonable amount of time!  Over the past week, I've stolen a few hours every evening to get the walls and trim in our dining room painted.

Before: Gold Walls!

We decided to paint the dining room Kestrel White - a warm neutral that the designers would probably call "greige".

I spent one whole evening just doing prep!  Wash the walls, spackle, sand, more spackle, more sanding, more cleaning!  Then the same thing with the trim, but add taping off the floor to the list.  I swear the prep work took longer than the painting.

However, I did finally prove to myself that taping off works a heck of a lot better if you remove the tape while the final coat is still wet.  It didn't mess up my paint job one bit!  In the past, I've experienced peeling at the edges which was completely exasperating.

So after all that prep, I did two coats of paint on the walls.  One coat probably would have been fine, but because the paint changed color so drastically between being wet and dry, I couldn't tell if I had the desired coverage or not.  Even with two coats, I only used half a gallon of paint.

I did three coats on the trim - the third mostly for good luck, as it probably wasn't necessary.  I think there's less than 20 feet of trim in the dining room, so that third coat really only took about ten minutes.

Changing the trim to white really makes the new color pop

When it first went up, I really wasn't too sure about the color.  I think it was such a change from the gold that it seemed super bland.  But after living with it for several days, we're loving it.  It is really bland, but I think that's a good thing in a space that opens into so many other rooms.  There's a lot of visual stuff going on just outside this room, so allowing the walls to kind of disappear is nice.  It's a warmer color than the Rainwashed or March Wind in the living room and kitchen, but it brings them together nicely.

After: Brighter and Less Bold

Much better than before!

As is typical around here, one upgrade makes other things ugly by comparison, and the built-in cabinets are no exception.  With the gold gone and the trim changed to white, this thing has become quite the eyesore.  The wood doesn't match the floor, and the cream trim looks dirty with all that fresh white nearby.  Next on my list is getting this beast painted!

You might also be interested in these posts:
Choosing Dining Room Paint
Dining Room Mood Board
Choosing Paint Colors

Bonnie Projects

Dining Room Update: Getting Worse Before it Gets Better

Not like you can tell, but we've been making progress on the dining room!  I ordered almost everything we'll need to set up the room.  Most of it has arrived, but is still in boxes because first I need to paint.

Lucky is not impressed.

The suggested paint color was Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams.  It was supposed to be lighter than the Rainwashed we used in the living room, but in reality it's just a little greener and only 4 LRV points different.  We felt like the colors would be so similar that it would look like something was wrong with the paint in one room, or that the lighting was weird.

My next idea was to go for a different cool neutral, but one that was markedly lighter than the living room or kitchen.  Site White seemed like a good choice.

I bought a sample quart and painted a bit in various spots around the room.  It was awful once it dried.  Something about the texture of the walls and the lighting with this color made the room look dingy and dirty.  It also felt too cold.

So then we considered a warm neutral, Kestrel White.

Much better!  I bought the gallon and now I just need to paint!

Once I get all this other stuff out of here... (keeping it real)

this is driving me nuts!

I have about a dozen boxes from everything I ordered, a new piece of furniture for the guest room, and a thousand warm neutral paint swatches.

Bonnie Projects