Room Makeover #1

Hello! I admit, I've come late to house redecorating (we've lived in four houses during our married life thus far). In part, this was due to years of not staying in a house long enough to get tired of the previous owner's choice of paint colors or wallpaper. (One house in particular had been tastefully done over shortly before we moved in.) And in part it was due to general laziness on my part - and a bit of fear too, I think. I had visions of upending a opened paint can or something like that and creating a huge mess all over the place. (Don't know why I thought that, probably read that somewhere.)

Well, my hand was finally forced a few years back when a burst pipe caused water damage to a few rooms in our house. Insurance paid for a painter to redo ruined walls, but this included only portions of the kitchen and dining room. And of course, the walls and trim that were freshly painted made the undamaged, unpainted sections look bad by comparison. So I had no choice but to start painting.

And like with every new task, I learned by doing and got better at it as I went along. By now I've repainted about 2/3 of our interior, but had never gotten around to doing any before-and-after photos. Until now. 

Our daughter moved out of our house for good this past summer. She'd already gone away to college, but she'd always lived in furnished rooms while there. Her bed, dresser, desk, chair and other belongings she had no room for stayed put in her bedroom here. But then came time to move on to grad school and move into an apartment. So of course her bedroom furnishings moved with her, leaving an empty room.

I had plans for that empty room, but first had to get rid of the less-than-attractive color scheme:

A weird shade of blue was on the walls, with apple-green trim. The white you see to the right of the window frame is the result of some wall patching. 

Another view of those colors. 

The door had a rough appearance, especially the upper right panel. I think someone had made a stab at removing the paint, but gave up rather quickly. 

Thankfully, those colors are now a thing of the past! Here's how this room now looks:

This is the window you see the full view of in the second photo from the top. The colors look more muted than they actually are because it was an overcast day outside. 

The wall color is the Sherwin-Williams version of Behr's "Swiss Coffee", a warm white. The Behr color was picked through a misunderstanding with the painter who came in to redo our ruined walls, but I ended up liking it fine. The paint trim is Valspar's "Ultra White" - again, due to the painter. I wanted to continue with the white trim that the dining room and kitchen had been painted with, so he picked that paint to redo the damaged trim in those rooms. I figured if it was good enough for a professional painter, it was good enough for me!

A much-improved door:

You would hardly think it was the same room! It never ceases to amaze me how much bigger a room appears when the color scheme changes from dark to light. I've seen this in other rooms in the house already: I've taken them from brown, dark red and purple/green/lemon yellow/turquoise (the latter was another unusual bedroom decorating scheme)to the same brightening tones of warm white/white (yes, I've been using the same paint colors throughout, the better to show off my eclectic decor). 

I should add that I've actually shown only half of our daughter's old bedroom above. The other half had already been painted; I just hadn't taken any "before" photos of it. I say "other half" because it's almost as if her room is two rooms in one. The other half is slightly larger because it has a closet. There's a wide doorway that leads directly to the second half, the portion of the room I just finished painting. Each section has its own door leading to the hallway; that's why I think of the entire room as two sections. 

And from now on, that's how this room will be treated. In my next post, I'll show off what I mean by that!