A few weeks ago, I wrote about the painting projects we're doing in our home and how
Choosing paint is HARD work!. Well, we're finally finished (sort of) with one of the rooms. So I guess you could call this The Big Reveal. (Dramatic enough for ya?)
 |
| The color choices |
A few weeks ago when I first blogged about the repainting we're doing in the guest room, I showed this picture of the 8 colors that I had picked out. (Note that you can click any of the pictures in this blog post to see larger versions.) It seemed like a lot to me, but I heard from other people that they tried many more before even deciding on 1 color...and I was actually trying to choose 2 colors (for 2 separate rooms--the guest bedroom and the master bedroom). Before my husband weighed in on the color choices, I was quite certain that, for the guest bedroom, I liked the one 2nd from the left in the top row: Daydream Haze. It's a very muted tone and looked like it would work well for a calming effect. It turns out that my husband liked Daydream Haze for the master bedroom, and one of the blues in the bottom left for the guest bedroom. But first we wanted to see what the other 2 paint colors in the same set of 3 looked like so off to the store I went (again) for 2 more paint samples. The set of 3 was Dawn's Early Light (lightest shade), Scandinavian Sky, and Mountain Stream.
 |
| Guest bedroom BEFORE (1) |
The Guest bedroom BEFORE (1) and (2) pictures show our guest bedroom BEFORE we started this project. It's not a huge room, so we wanted to go for something that could make the room look bigger and brighter. We decided to do the whole room in the middle color, Scandinavian Sky, and then do 2 horizontal stripes around the room, 1 thick stripe in Mountain Stream and another thin stripe surrounding the thick stripe, in Dawn's Early Light.
 |
| Guest bedroom BEFORE (2) |
As far as furniture goes, all we had was that metal frame that you get from the mattress store, so we wanted to buy completely new stuff. Before the room color was even decided, we looked at furniture online to try to narrow down our options. As I mentioned in
Choosing paint is HARD work! our decorating style is modern, tasteful, and simple. At the bare minimum, we wanted to get a bed frame. My husband left the other pieces up to me to decide. He picked a black bed frame from Scandinavian Designs, and I picked a tall mirror and a dresser in the same furniture family (also from Scandinavian Designs). I scheduled the furniture to be delivered earlier this week, so we HAD to be done painting by then.
(Drumroll please....)
 |
| Guest bedroom AFTER (1) |
We pretty much dedicated ALL of last weekend to painting the guest bedroom. Here's the results of our efforts. The Guest bedroom AFTER (1) picture shows how it turned out after just 1 coat. We didn't do primer and our walls are textured (it's called "orange peel" texture), so once the first coat dried, I could already see spots where the tan color showed through the blue. At first we thought it was just a few places that we might just need to touch up, but upon further inspection, we discovered it was happening in A LOT of places. (Bummer...both our arms were already sore from painting the first coat!)
 |
| Guest bedroom AFTER (2) |
I don't know if it happened because we didn't use primer, because of the textured walls, because the blue was such a light shade, or because the paint was Olympic (versus the other times we had used Valspar). We decided we would need to do a second coat around the entire room. Towards the end of the first coat, we ran out of our first gallon of paint, so back to Lowe's I went. After finishing the second coat, we were tired (and tired of painting too!), so we walked away from it for a couple of days and came back again later to inspect the paint.
 |
| Guest bedroom AFTER (3) |
The break did us good. I marked (with painter's tape) all of the spots where I could still see the original tan color showing through slightly. Compared to what I saw after the first coat, there were only less than 15-20 quarter sized spots. My arms were still hurting on Sunday (from all that rolling and stretching), so on Monday, I touched up all the spots I'd identified. The Guest bedroom AFTER (2) and (3) pictures show the room after we finishing our 2nd coat AND after fixing all of the spots.
We ended up deciding to use the lighter shade (Dawn's Early Light) in the closet, and as far as the main blue (Scandinavian Sky) goes, we liked how it turned out so well that we ended up deciding not to do the stripes around the room. (At least for now anyway.)
 |
| Guest bedroom AFTER (4) |
Once the painting was finished, it was just a waiting game until the furniture was delivered on Wednesday. (The guest bedroom AFTER (2) picture shows the tape markings on the floor where each piece would go.) The Guest bedroom AFTER (4), (5), and (6) pictures show the room after adding the furniture.
 |
| Guest bedroom AFTER (5) |
For the bedding, I got sheets from Macy's and an all-season duvet from Overstock.com (both are 500 thread count). I've never had a down duvet before, so I was a little concerned that it might be too warm or too cold, but so far, I'm impressed with it and happy with my purchase.
I mentioned that our guest room preparations are sort of finished. That's because we still have one more thing on the list to do: get better lighting. We have a floor lamp in there right now, but what we really want to do is to get some recessed lighting put in the ceiling.
 |
| Guest bedroom AFTER (6) |
We're extremely satisfied with the results of the guest bedroom. We LOVE how the paint color, furniture, and bedding turned out. Even though the main reason for preparing our guest room is for the guests that we have coming to stay with us in July, as it turns out, our favorite overnight guests
James and his wife came for dinner and then stayed in our guest room last night. We enjoyed having them and were happy to hear that they liked the room and our decorations.
Now if only there weren't so much more to do in the master bedroom....
4 comments: