Color me Tickled

Painting weekend!!! Woot! This weekend we were busy busy bees. And it feels wonderful. After long last we FINALLY got the bedrooms painted. Of course it just so happened to be a beautiful spring weekend in Western Washington. Such is life.

Prep work. The worst part of painting. First I washed all the walls and trim. Gross. Unfortunately this is an important step especially if you're planning on taping off anything, the tape won't stick to the dirt/oils.

Then I spackled all the holes in the walls (the previous owners left us with some doozies). I used DAP DryDex spacke ($5.00 at Lowes) and a 3" flexible spackle knife ($6.50 at Lowes - annoying its more expensive than the spackle itself!).

 

It goes on pink and when its dry it turns white, kind of nice to be able to know when you're ready for the second coat. You really only need a second coat when it comes to deep holes over 1/4 inch or so.

Other than that just go for it! You want to make sure to get it as flat as possible and not much residue around the hole, get most of the spackle in the hole.  In theory you're supposed to sand it after it dries which I didn't. Kinda wish that I had but I don't think you can really notice it unless you know where to look. I also didn't texture the filled holes after painting, they're so small.

Then comes the taping. And tape we did. We used two whole rolls of 1.5 inch Scotch painters tape for all three rooms.

Looking down the hallway, first door on left is old "boys" room, second on left is "master" and at the end of the hall is the old "girls" room. Door on right is bathroom. 

We took all the doors off the hinges and taped off the trim and put plastic sheeting over it. As you can see we have pretty thick trim, which I love, but it becomes hazardous when painting.

This is in the "boys" room, it has a band of trim around the room allowing for two colors and making for a joy of prepping experience. If you haven't taped off this type of trim before its hard, the tape doesn't want to stick to it cause there isn't much of a lip/edge to stick to. Even with taping and papering off like this we still have places where paint got on it. Oops.





Here you can see the dual colors we were working with. Very masculine. Very not what I wanted. And that upper taupe/beige color, so over it.







You can see the white splotches were I spackled, this was the worst of the rooms for holes. This room is really more of an office than anything but since Michael and I both came into the relationship with futons that we're being stubborn about getting rid of we wedged his old one into this room (currently sitting diagonal).

Molly helping out :-)

 Now on to the old girls room. It's pink. Now in general I'm not even a fan of pink to begin with. At all. I can take it in small doses in the right shade or application. I do in fact own one pink shirt. Pink peonies I adore. Pink rooms, not so much.

And its pink. Ugh. Anyways we loved the wainscoting, it gives the room texture and a nice touch. It doesn't help this is the room that we see every day walking down the hallway, and I don't like shutting the bedroom doors because it makes the hallway so dark. 

Please note the green swirly detailing towards the ceiling. I'd really make an awful princess.

Moving on to our room. As stated previously our room isn't much of a master room, just the larger of the rooms in the house. Sigh. Next house I'll get my master closet/bathroom! Luckily this room only needed simple taping off of the baseboards and door/window trim. 

Notice the same taupe/beige color that was in the boys room, and the hallway, and the bathroom and in the living room. I'm so tired of looking at this color, I get that it goes with everything and is neutral but goodness, it has no life to it! 

Of course we have already lived here for 6 months so we just moved everything to the center of the rooms (and shoved more out into the living room) and put layers upon layers of plastic over it. We were a little too eager to move in when we bought it so not much thinking ahead was done.

Please do take note of the size of our "master" closet. And yes it's equally divided between Michael space and mine. Girls I will take your sympathy now.

We kind of did things backwards and are planning on painting the ceiling later (if ever). To me it looks slightly dull (we're leaving the ceiling white) but I'm pretty sure Michael would kill me if I asked him to paint in this house again. Hence the "if ever".

Now I'm going to do a "big reveal" finished product post tomorrow but I'll give you a sneak peak on the colors we chose.

"Girls" room

"Master" room

The green color is decently represented in that picture, the brown/grey not so much. But you kind of get the point. The guest bedrooms were both painted the green and the master was the brown/grey. We went eggshell finish in Behr paint and primer, the green color is "Rejuvenate" and the brown/grey is "Suede Grey". There was another brown/grey we were looking at that was "Elephant Skin" that I really liked and was wanting cause the name was so awesome.

Come check out the big reveal tomorrow! Anyone see The Hunger Games this weekend? What did you think (especially those of you who read the books)?