A New Bedroom With All The Trimmings

After my Adventure in Electrical was over, I turned my attention back to the trim. I had already sanded and deglossed all the existing trim so that was ready for paint. Grandma and I mutually agreed that the doors and windows shouldn't be painted. I didn't ask her what her reason for that decision was but for me, I just didn't want to do all the extra sanding and painting. I also like the look of stained wood doors with white trim and it worked well here because it's a similar tone to the wood furniture I garbage picked inherited.

I carefully taped the walls around all the windows and removed the door and the hinges  I broke out the can of semigloss Monterey White and got to work.

I gave all the trim 2 coats. While I was at it, I painted the cornices I took down before. I personally don't want them but I have to choose my battles here and I know grandma would insist they be put back up. At least she allowed me to paint them.

After the trim and cornices were dry, I rehung them above the windows. Not bad and I'd soon come to realize I'd regret getting rid of them if I did.

By this time I was ready to turn my attention to the molding separating the lower and upper walls. I used pre-primed lattice strips. They’re nice because they are thin, light weight, and cheap! I measured and cut the strips using the miter saw dad gave me when he got a new one. Then I applied a nice squiggle of adhesive caulk to the back of each piece and stuck it to the wall. Once they were stuck up and straightened out with a level, I used my air nailer to completely mangle their nice smooth surfaces. (I'm covering the good, the bad and the ugly here) Turns out that they really don't work well with lath and plaster/cement walls and I should have just used liquid nails to glue them up. I did the same sort of surface marring destruction to the crown molding and spent an extra day caulking all the holes and dents and making them look pretty again. This is a learning experience and I definitely learned here. Once all the edges and corners and cracks and holes were caulked, smooth, and dry, I taped and painted them with the semigloss white. I also replaced the scalloped trim above the closet door with a wider piece of the lattice trim.

This is the only photo I have that shows the existing trim, chair rail, and the crown molding. I really need to get better at remembering to take more "progress" photos. More to come on the bedroom so stay tuned.

No, This Isn't a Cave.

When I last wrote about this room, I had shown the before photos and a couple progress photos where Grandma and I had emptied the room of all her knick-knacks and furniture.

The first thing I did was give all the woodwork a good sanding to remove the glossy finish and then I wiped it all down with liquid deglosser to clean off all the dust and soften anything remaining in the cracks that didn't get sanded well. Then I removed the 10,000 nails in the walls (OK so maybe it wasn't that many, but she had a lot of stuff on the walls.) I Spackled the holes and once that was dry I sanded and repeated. That gets a nice, smooth, even surface which is extremely necessary because any imperfection in the wall surface is amplified by dark colored paint.

Benjamin Moore Old Navy

Yup, dark paint.  Benjamin Moore's Old Navy to be exact! I had seen a room on Houzz with navy above white board and batten that I instantly fell in love with. It had short high windows like this room which gets a lot of light so it seemed like a perfectly suited color scheme to use here. I had Valspar Ultra color matched at Lowes in an Eggshell finish.

Benjamin Moore Monterey White
For some reason Blogger keeps graying out this photo. Click here to see it. 

I'm not typically a fan of using the same color on the walls as the ceiling. Grandma says that's the way to do it because "white ceilings are old fashioned," which is ridiculous, because there's a time and a place for white vs. colored ceilings. I love a white ceiling in most cases and this is one of them because Old Navy on the ceiling and the walls would make this room feel like a cave. The ceiling, trim, and the lower wall will be Monterey White by Benjamin Moore as well. I got a gallon of Valspar Ultra color matched in eggshell and a quart in semi gloss for the trim. Normally the ceiling is a Flat finish, but because I had to buy 2 gallons and a quart of paint for one room, I used the eggshell on the ceiling too. (Big spender here.)

Once all the surfaces were prepped, I started cutting in with white around the ceiling, lower windows, lower corners of the room and the floor. I didn't worry about getting paint on the trim or upper walls because they would be painted over with navy or semigloss white later. Then I painted the ceiling and lower walls. I figured I'd put the chair rail molding just above the window sills so i just eyeballed the height of the white all around the room.

Once 2 coats had dried, I measured the appropriate length down from the ceiling in 3 foot increments all around the room and marked it with a pencil. Then, with a yardstick, I connected the dots so I would have a nice straight line to tape along. I knew the line would be covered with the molding, but I wanted to keep it somewhat straight and the tape was a bright, bold visual aid to help me from going too low with the navy blue.

After cutting in around the upper windows, doors, and corners of the walls, I started painting the upper walls. This deep navy blue took 3 coats to get full coverage.

I didn't paint up to the ceiling because I used a paint edger.

That was when grandma suggested crown molding. I had thought about it before she suggested it, and the only reason I didn't do it was because I couldn't afford it and I figured I could always add it later. Since she offered to buy it, I was happy to be able to do it sooner rather than later. The walls are finished so stay tuned for more about the bedroom.