Our Guest Room Do-over, Part 2 – In the Process

 

See Part 1 here.

The process of painting the room took much longer than I expected.  It took more primer to cover these mid-tone walls than I expected.  That means it also took more work!

The work began with removing a lot of things, taking down blinds and laying plastic to cover the floor.  I also covered a few things that we didn’t remove from the room so they wouldn’t get paint on them.

In the above photo you can see a piece of plywood on the floor.  This is covering a weak place in the floor which was caused by water damage before we moved in.  My husband hoped to repair it before his parents came, but the painting took up too much time, so this part was tabled for “later”.

The window frames and storm windows are removable from the inside, which was helpful.  Here you can see that the taping had been started.

I had a new mop head for an old mop that I no longer used much, so I popped it on, sprayed my homemade surface cleaner on it and mopped the walls. :-)  I had tried to remove all the nails, but they were hard to see on this paneling, and over time there had been a lot of them put in!  Anyway, the mop sponge got kind of torn up, but it did the job.

The room began to look SO much better with just the white primer started!

It took three coats of primer to cover the walls acceptably.  All the grooves in the paneling also had to be painted by hand with a brush because the roller didn’t get them well enough.  Of course, the edging was done that way as well.  Sadly, my taping job wasn’t all that great, so we did end up with some white and blue on the trim.  Oh, well.  The room was never meant to be perfect what with the stained carpet and damaged floor!

I was very blessed to have a lot of help on this project!  A friend of mine gave me a good chunk of help two different days and my mom helped with the brushing in the middle areas during the primer stage.  My husband also helped a lot when he was able.

And the paint goes on!

We only had one can of paint and we didn’t want to run out and have to buy more.  Another can might not have matched perfectly which would have meant another coat for the entire room.  It took at least two coats of paint as it was, and maybe a bit extra in some places. I think I spread it too thin on the first coat.  I was being too careful to make it “go far enough” I guess.

In between the painting I worked on other things for the room.  Cleaning up some of the décor, printing and framing pictures, and sewing were some of the projects.  Here is my dear mom taking a nap in our living room after helping me by pinning the valances I was making for above the windows. :-)

Some things I wanted to get done had to be abandon for the time being because I realized (with my husband’s help) that I didn’t have time or strength before my in-laws came and the important things were the painting and getting the bed set up.  Funny thing was that at least one of my ideas turned out to be unnecessary later on.  I was able to work around it quite nicely and with much less effort. :-)  It is good to not overachieve sometimes, and as Christians it’s good to remember how temporary things of this life are and be content with simpler.  I really needed to not be exhausted during my in-laws visit – and thank the Lord, I wasn’t!

I did a lot of looking online trying to find a bed spread, comforter, or quilt for the bed.  I’d thought to make my own, but that was way out of reach in such a short timeframe.  I concluded that I wanted something not too pricey, not too fancy, not too fluffy and not too light colored.  I knew guests would be sitting on it as there isn’t much seating in the room and I didn’t want them to feel like they would soil it or crush it if they did.  I ended up buying a very inexpensive one at Wal-Mart that should serve fine for a guest room that isn’t heavily used.  I also decided I should look for something that I would like to use in our bedroom or the living room if I want to make a quilt for the guest room later.  The one I ended up getting happily fits all the requirements.  I  feel like the Lord helped me with that.  And, my husband was probably glad I settled for something “cheap, pretty and good”. :-)  (Sorry, no picture at this point.  Can’t spoil the surprise.)

My sister-in-law helped take the tape down the day after the paint was all done and then another day she helped set up furniture.  The two of us got quite a bit done.  We got the bedframe from a storage shed, cleaned it and set it up, and collected other furniture and tried out some different options. 

The footboard that I was going to convert into a headboard didn’t work out because the paint had been damaged and also the knobs for the posts had been lost. :-P  (My husband said he may be able to fix it up at a later date.)  My sister-in-law said we should attach a board where the headboard would have attached to keep the metal from rubbing the wall.  I think I was the one who suggested rolling it in an old bed sheet we’d used as a drop cloth for further protection.  It worked out great as you can see in the picture. :-)

I know I’ve just tantalized you with this post, so please come back for Part 3 to see the results! :-)