Guest Bedroom Update — Paint!

10 months in our house now and we just purchased a ladder. Do I get some kind of award for that? Procrastinator of the year, perhaps? New ladder means finally able to paint some rooms with tall ceilings. Enter exhibit A, the room we are calling the guest bedroom.

*Ladder and puppy not included.

The paint color is Valspar Woodlawn Colonial Gray. I was literally scraping the last of the paint out of the bottom of the gallon, so I need to run back to Lowe’s for a sampler so I can do touch ups. I’ll be back later this week with plans for bedding, curtains, etc.

What Next?

I’m at a crossroads as to where in the house I should focus on next. Right now I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head, and some rooms are halfway there, but I want to check some more off into the ‘done’ column and add them to the house tour page. Here are my options.

The entryway has a substantial wall that needs a bit more than your typical console table. I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect table that isn’t going to break the budget, but haven’t fallen completely in love with anything except something way overpriced from Pottery Barn (typical).

The next space I’m considering is the upstairs guest bedroom.

I bought a few pieces of the Hemnes bedroom furniture from IKEA over Thanksgiving (was it really that long ago?) and haven’t done much with this room since then unless you count death by IKEA assembly. I even have a can of the paint ready to slap onto the walls, just need the motivation to actually paint again (do you see those tall ceilings?? ugh).

The last space I’m considering is the basement. Yes the ENTIRE basement. Kinda daunting, right? I have a whole laundry list of what I’d love to do for this space, but the first thing I would tackle is putting up some art on the walls (including in the stairway as I noted here).

The difficult part is finding the right sized frames that I like that don’t cost an arm and a leg.  I think I’ve gotten at least 3 different frames from 3 different stores lined up. (Here’s a sneak peek at the finished product from my last post, it just needs to get on the wall now!)

Decisions, decisions. Most likely I will probably just continue to stumble along trying to focus on everything at once! Ah the joys of home ownership.

Basement Bathroom Painted

Here’s yet another mini-before and after. This one should have just taken a few hours, but turned into a 2 day, all day, drawn out affair. Who knew painting a bathroom could be so painful? Here’s the before (on closing day, yellow hello auto white balance):

And just for fun, here is a photo from the MLS listing. I thought it was entertaining how much crap they tried to fit into this bathroom.

It wasn’t pretty. Over Thanksgiving and Christmas we were hosting several gatherings at our house so it needed to be painted. Yes, needed. There were watermarks on the ceiling from some novice plumbing that needed to be covered up. Ugh, let’s talk about how much I hate painting ceilings. It is the worst. First I used some Kilz primer for the water stains and then covered with 2 coats of white (on the whole ceiling of course, you can’t just paint one spot, it doesn’t work like that). Next up was the walls. Do you SEE how many nooks and crannies I had to paint around? I did 2 coats and barely made a dent in the gallon of paint but it took FOREVER. I also recaulked where the crown molding met the ceiling since there were gaps in a few places and repainted most of the trim. Who knew painting a bathroom could be so painful. I am too lazy to look up the color, sorry. There’s a million blues like this one in any paint deck, trust me.

Here is the after. I will probably end up getting some new towels and maybe a small piece of bath furniture, but that’s it. I don’t really want to invest any more time in this bathroom. It looks decent and is functional. That’s enough for me.