Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’…

Some people (mostly B) say I love to paint. Errr wrong, try again. I really just love a lot of change for my decorating buck and painting is where it’s at for big impact on a not so big budget. Actually, I usually find painting to be a long and tedious process but in the end the rewards usually outweigh the tedium… except for that one time I accidentally painted the Living Room a lovely shade of highlighter green and then quickly painted over it the next morning. But that’s a paint disaster story for another day.

So based on my lovely inspiration board for our Bedroom overhaul I had decided to repaint our bedroom in Martha Stewart’s Milk .

But once the Robert Allen Ikat curtain fabric and the Braemore Wonderland pillow fabric (number 1 & number 9 on the board) arrived I was feeling a little less sure in my choice being the exact right light shade.. Luckily that was quickly remedied with my generous paint chip collection and a couple of minutes of staring at a bunch of paint chips.

So we broke out the paint chips held them up to our new fabric and chose a new white. Namely Martha Stewart’s Pip. It’s one of those so totally subtle color difference that you’d never be able to tell on a computer monitor but just feel better in person kind of differences. Believe me I’ve tried to photograph the difference between the two and it just isn’t happening, So you’ll have to trust me on this one.

With the the color decided again it was off to the paint store for an easy paint pick-up or so we thought. Martha Stewart paint happened to be on clearance for $12.00 a gallon. But due to the awesome price it happened to be sold out, discontinued, not coming back. Bummer.  So of course after some more pondering of shades of whites I went to my local Benjamin Moore pain dealer and had them color matched to BM’s interior paint in a  flat finish to minimize the look of bumps and nicks on the wall.

I was so excited about it brought it home, slapped a test swatch on the wall and quickly realized that in order to cover the dark green color we’d need to prime first.

Thankfully things got Rollin’ even if it was a little later in the day than I had planned after we made our third and final trip to the store to grab some primer. Give 2 cheers to under-planners like us! I set out to start the cutting in/edging process. This has always been my job whenever we set out to paint. B just doesn’t have the patience for it. He’s more of the immediate gratification of slapping some paint on the walls with a roller kind of guy. Even though he’s had more painting experience then he’d care to remember given that he married me.

Since where the walls meet the ceiling are awfully crooked and never look quite right no matter how carefully I edge. I decided this time to tape along the ceiling about 1/4 of an inch in. I would carry the wall color onto the ceiling instead of stopping right out the edge. It’s given the walls so a pretty finished look without the crooked edges even if some of the ceiling paint peeled slightly when I removed the tape. Oh well nothing a little patching and touch up paint can’t fix.

As for what we did with the furniture, we just pushed it into the middle of the room and squeezed around it. Doesn’t it look just lovely completely painted in primer with the glow of the flash against the room since it was pretty late by this point? We painted over a 2 day period since it ended up needing 1 coat of primer and 2 coats of paint to completely cover the old green paint. We finished the first coat of primer around 10:00 pm and camped out in the Living Room over night.

By the next afternoon, 3 coats of paint later and the help of our resident measurer…

We had the room completely painted and the TV newly hung on the wall instead of sitting on the dresser by the next evening.

We’ll be the first to admit that the room was already starting to look much better without changing the wall color and just by changing out a few accessories and bedding but we’re going for a whole new look here. So far the bedroom has gone from greens and oranges just thrown together haphazardly from whatever we had lying around.

To this with a few quick tweaks, like changing out the side tables, switching the lampshades. Adding some vintage chairs and a new side table between the bookcase.

All the way to this with a coat of paint.

The white is really soft and pretty in person, while we were rolling it on it kept reminding me of butter cream frosting and perfectly matches the colorful fabrics we chose for the curtains and pillows. I’m glad we switched at the last minute.

It’s a small room, so it’s feeling a lot more open with the lighter color paint. I’m fond of dark greens in a room but when we painted this one right as we moved into the house we didn’t realize that the light only really streams into the room in the morning not so much in the afternoon. The room felt more like a cave which could be good for sleeping but not so good for rising and shining.

On the side tables I added a couple of pretty placemats to protect the furniture from glasses of water and phones charging on the bedside tables at night.

My mom has always added a pretty little table scarf to the tops of furniture to lay things down and protect them from water rings and the daily grind.

Over time I may change these our for something larger. Maybe a vintage item, the sweet vintage style clock is also a new addition courtesy of an awesome friend for Christmas.

We’re also loving how big of an impact hanging the TV on the wall versus it sitting on the dresser has had on the space. It really opened up the entire area even in it’s unfinished state with Wires hanging down the wall and the not so pretty cable box sitting on the dresser. We definitely need to figure out what to do with that next.

It also really goes well with the new side tables we purchased allowing for a more open seamless feel across the back wall.

Overall we’re really happy with how bright and airy it’s making everything feel. So the next thing on my to-do list is to sew some pillows for the bed using the Braemore Wonderland fabric pictured above. I’m think ones with an envelope back in a neutral fabric so I can make the most of the 2 yards I have and spread it around the room. Then it’ll be onto sewing the drapes, picking out some nice colorful art to break up all the neutral walls and add pops of colors. I’m really liking the idea of using some original art pieces combined with prints. Oh and of course we still need to pick fabric for our two vintage chairs and get to reupholstering them. Fingers crossed it will be a record breaking fast sewing experience so we can add some color back into our nice neutral backdrop.

Sometimes I participate in these awesome parties: The DIY Showoff, Tatertots and Jello,  Thrifty Decor Chick, Tip Junkie, Today’s Creative Blog, Blue Cricket Design, House of Hepworths, Somewhat Simple, Fingerprints on the Fridge, Miss Mustard Seed,  The Thrifty Home, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, A Beach Cottage, Domestically Speaking, 504 Main, Simply Designing, Chic on a ShoeString