After six years, the awful rose wallpaper has been replaced and we finally have the relaxing blue/purple walls we’ve wanted in our bedroom. I’m very happy with how it turned out. The color is perhaps two shades darker than I was originally picturing for the room, but honestly I think it looks even better than what I was picturing. As soon as some financial issues are settled, I’m going to jump into some decorating in here – because now – finally, we have a room that’s a wonderful blank slate. I’m already getting ideas on new lamps, new bedding, and such to finally have a room in our house that is completely put together, rather than looking like something out of my Brighton college apartment days. It’s not that I necessarily mind the mismatched look, but I’m starting to feel hyperaware of how disorganized our house is compared to our other married friends. (These photos do pop, BTW, if you click them.)
In case you’re reading on a feed… this pink monstrosity of roses is what we’d been living with. The roses were big – at least three inches in size each. Noby would pounce them from the top of the TV. It was awful paper, but was made even worse by the small size of our bedroom – the walls just seemed so small, so confining. Just by removing the paper, it appeared so much larger! It also had a bit of a Tuscan look to it – 110 years of aging, new plaster patches, cracks (thankfully none that were structural) and general… character.
So originally, Mom was going to be coming up to help paint Monday (yesterday) to Thursday, but due to starting a new job, she instead came up Friday and stayed until Sunday. I’m so happy we’d already removed the wallpaper over Memorial Day weekend. With the Stanley Cup finals this week (and other plans), getting everything prepped before Mom arrived was a bit tricky. Erich took Friday off to finish the last bits of wallpaper scraping, which was incredibly helpful so we could just get started with some patching and painting Saturday morning.
Since we have horsehair plaster walls that have a bit of texture to them, we opted to do a rag rolling (or really as it wound up becoming… a rag sponging) technique with the color to incorporate the texture into the wall color, rather than sanding and skimming the wall to a perfect flat surface. On Saturday, we patched holes and cracks in the wall, and while we waited for those spots to dry, Mom and I focused on getting the trim work painted in a nice crisp white. Once the spackle dried, we began the walls with a base layer of Valspar’s “Swiss Coffee” in a flat finish, which honestly looked identical to the Snow White semi-gloss we opted to use for all of the trim. The bare walls were quite thirsty for the paint – we ended up using two gallons for just the base layer. We let that dry overnight on Saturday and did the top rag layer on Sunday morning in Valspar’s “Prairie Sky,” which is a very pretty periwinkle blue. The sun plays with the color nicely – sometimes it looks purple. Sometimes it looks blue.
The top layer took just about three hours to do by hand. We did not cut in corners, but instead used paper towels to lightly spread the paint in the joints to give it a softer look. The end result is a very soft billowing color. Very pretty.
We still have to paint the radiator (we were leaning toward the Prairie Sky, but I’ve had suggestions of silver… which quite possibly will be the decision so we can spray paint it). The ceiling also needs some repair work, so that will have to be done later. But for now – I have a pretty new bedroom that’s so much brighter and soothing and nice to come home to!
Off to stitching now – with the change in Mom’s visit, I’m a bit behind in finishing this round’s Mirabilia RR. I’m hoping to wrap that up tonight so I can get it in the mail tomorrow.
