Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
When we bought this house a year ago, this is what the front room and hallway looked like.
Relatively innocuous.... but not good. The walls were streaked with dirt where pets had rubbed against them. The paint was a sad grey-green, which was repeated throughout the house. And the wallpaper border just screamed "1990's!".
We don't have furniture for this room, so even though it's been used as a play space, craft room, dumping ground, and storage locker, it hasn't been given any love.
After 8 months went by, I decided to strip the wallpaper. The wallpaper in the kitchen had come off in sheets, so I thought this would be no different. I quickly discovered that the border had been applied over primed drywall..... and I think they used E-6000 instead of wallpaper paste. After it took me 2+ hours to strip 5 feet, I had to rethink my approach.
A few more months went by, and I finally rented a wallpaper steamer and got down to business. 2 hours later, the walls were de-papered. There was so much damage where I had originally stripped the border that I had to skim coat the entire top 2 feet of wall, then prime it, then wipe down the walls to remove some of the nasty dirt. FINALLY I was ready to paint.
And now, it's lovely!
I chose Creamy Mushroom by Behr (hard to tell, but it's a very light tan), and had it mixed in my favorite Behr Premium Plus Ultra in a Satin finish. I actually had to use 2 gallons, because I painted the inside of the closet too (amazing how much extra space & time that tacks on to a project).
I know, it's not an exciting color.... more the wall equivalent of khaki pants.... but it's clean, and light, and the newly white trim just glows. As we do for each room we paint, we also replaced all the light switches and outlets with white toggle switches and white square outlets.
I like how the blue door plays off the brown, and I plan to paint the back of the door a deep chocolate brown for more contrast.
I'm down to just 3 more painting projects. I might even be done before Christmas!
This post is part of The William Morris Project via Pancakes and French Fries.
8 comments:
The room looks lovely! I'm sure it's much more welcoming now--even without furniture!
Bet this feels like a real load off. I too like the compliment of the blue door with it.
Nice door color! I am toying with the idea of a blue door.
-Leilani the Clyde Woman
Ugh, what a lot of work to get to the "fun" part! Great job, it looks so fresh -- a true clean slate. We also replace the switches & outlets when we paint new areas of our house.
This is a great improvement! I feel ya on the closet painting and it adding more time. We had a weird 3 x 3 foot nook in our living room that we had to paint as well. It was awkward stooping so much to paint and it took so much time! Love the blue door---that shade of blue is perfect!
OK, I wrote a comment, but I was spacing out during the whole make sure I'm a real person process and I think I might have lost it. The gist of my comment was this: It's awesome. I know how much work it was. Khaki is good! :-)
Yikes. Wallpaper can be such a horrible mission -- whether you're putting it up or taking it down! But WTG for persevering! It looks great -- and only 3 more painting projects is awesome!
Great job! I think I would have given up with that difficult border - wow. The end result looks great, and your blue door is so cute.
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