Friday, February 8, 2013

Bedroom Renovation - Paint the Past

We fell in love with our first house in June of 2012. It was a bittersweet victory when the three of us (awesome buyer agents) walked in the door because we knew it was a short-sale. If you know anything about short-sales...they're anything but short.

The key was in our hands October of 2012. And may I add, those 4 months were filled with patience, impatience, hope, dismay, expectation, and restlessness. Waiting for God to bring things to fruition can be utterly difficult! But finally, we were home. I moved in first to be closer to Sarah and begin preparing the house for our new life set to kick off in December of the same year. I never knew my bride-to-be was so creative in the home until I began receiving my orders.

Just kidding, we both were excited to begin transforming this other person's house into our house. One of the first items on the list was to transform the guest bedroom into something...uhm...less frightening.

 
Guest Bedroom Moving Day 2

Guest Bedroom New York Yankees
 
"Clean" was not in our contract, so we said hello to the resident dust bunny's and get to work. The child living in this room previously was a big New York Yankees fan if you couldn't tell by the murderous colors. They even painted over the power outlets so we couldn't leave those for later. Sarah and I zipped over to Home Depot and grabbed a few paint swatches. We learned our lesson the hard way that a $3 paint sample is worth it after re-doing our laundry closet (a blog post I'm sure we'll get to soon).

Sample Paint Swatches

Fill Holes with Spackle
 
Sarah became a master at spackling all of the holes in the wall. I walked around with my trusty tools pulling drywall anchors out like white heads (ew) while my better half made everything pretty. That big splash of spackle where the baseboard is missing was my attempt at covering a huge hole in the wall. I picked up piece of metal with spackle tape along the edges and smeared that puppy till it stopped moving. All in all it worked great and took less than 10 minutes.
 
Drywall Spackle Holes Everywhere

Drywall Hole Repair
 
The first thing we like to do is tape all of our edges and power outlets. If you don't want to paint it...tape it! The more time you spend preparing for the paint, the quicker you'll be able to paint without making any big mistakes. No matter what, there will be some mistakes, or at least we tell our selves that to feel better when we goof up. We decided on a light and airy green color, Palm Breeze. We wanted that fresh mint feel that could also be versatile if we changed our purpose for the room. We chose the Behr Premium 2 in 1 paint because of the dark colors on the wall. Although most people prime the wall and then paint...the cost for Behr 2 in 1 was so close we just went with it and applied two full coats. We think it turned out awesome!

First Coat of Paint
 
Most of this work was done late at night because, well, we still had to work and also finish planning the wedding. This project became our date night activity. We didn't have much newspaper to use on the floor but we sure had a lot of leftover boxes from my move. I taped them down and they did an excellent job of protecting the floor!

Painting the Baseboards

Dining Room Chair Ladder Substitute
 
For a man without a ladder, dining room chairs are perfect substitutes! We also painted the old wood trim as a temporary solution to freshen up the room. Eventually I need to replace it with real trim...but don't remind Sarah :)

Finished Guest Bedroom

Guest Bedroom Paint Project

Cleaned Up Guest Bedroom
 
So, what do you think? Pretty different huh?! Sarah, being the amazing wife that she is, felt the walls required a bit of decorating. I've always been fine with white walls and no decorations...but married life is much more aesthetic! She found these place mats for a cheap price and picked up some purple spray paint from the store. Let's re-purpose them!

Spray Paint Table Mats DIY

Purple Spray Paint

Spray Paint the Place Mats

Don't Forget the Nails
 
Don't forget to paint the nails too! The paint dried fairly quickly and we rushed them onto the wall!

The Finished Room
 
I'd say our guest bedroom renovation project was a success...for now :) Do you think we freshened it up? Do you have any painting tips? What else should we hang on these walls? Post a comment below!
 

1 comment:

We love hearing from YOU!