The Do-Over

This is a story about a room. The room that started out as my daughter's bedroom when she was in grade school. The walls were painted half pink with wall paper on the other half. The wall paper was white with pink polka dots (it was the 80's okay?). And was there a border in the center of the wall you ask? Why of course, it was a wide border with unicorns on it, yes unicorns, grade school, 80's remember? It was amazing. Then she went away to college. She grew up, she got married and she didn't return home.

We boxed up her things, put them in the attic. Then her brother moved from his small bedroom (the youngest gets the smallest room, that is just the way things are) into the room. By this time the wall paper had already come down and the pink walls had been painted over. Just an off white with green trim around the window and the center of the walls.

The walls got plastered with posters, mostly car posters. And stereo speakers and more posters. There he stayed for years. Stayed at home and did college locally in Seattle. Then he too decided it was time to go out on his own. I gave him the opportunity to pack up his own room since he was there and he had time.

The room was packed up. Boxes were stored in both bedroom closets and in the garage. We packed his car full of clothes, computer and necessities until nothing else could fit in. And then he drove away.

Fast forward now to a year and a half later. No need to talk about how the room became a large space to store extra things, such as clothes, fabric, boxes, fabric, books, magazines. For awhile it was a home office, a sewing room and always a guest bedroom. That is why every house should have at least three bedrooms. One to sleep in, one for guests and one to move the junk from the guests bedroom into before the guests arrive.

In the last three weeks, mostly weekends, my husband went along with my idea to redo this room. I have had the colors and design in my head for many months. I knew exactly the feeling I wanted to create in this room. It is now finished. There is no bed in there right now, which is actually really cool. Lots of room to hula hoop!

We will be buying a new mattress for our room and our "gently used" queen mattress will then take up all that nice floor space in the room and I will be relegated to hula hooping in the backyard and on rainy days in the living room. But we like company (one of us does anyway).

To start with we moved all the furniture but one cabinet out. The old mattress was picked up by Salvation Army. The table came into the dining room for a few weeks.

All the green trim work was removed and the walls were patched up. And I mean millions of nail holes of all various sizes. If you have any questions on how to patch nail holes just ask. I think I put in enough hours to become certified at spackling. I thought back to when my son moved into the room and it just seemed so natural that he would put up a few posters and things on the walls.

Well, let me tell you that I now have a deep appreciation for walls. And I will think three times before putting a nail into one.

Here are the details of what we did and an estimate of what we spent. It's an estimate because I'm on a roll typing and don't want to go find my receipts.

Wall paint - Glidden from Home Depot. Colors - Walnut Bark and Antique Silver. We had to buy a gallon of both, plus a quart of semi-gloss for the window trim. Two quarts for the brown wall would have been fine but two quarts costs the same as a gallon. I do a lot of baking and I'm pretty sure there is a lot more in a gallon than in two quarts. The paint and a few rollers and tape for masking came to about 95.00.  Another trip to Home Depot was to buy outlet covers, five at 5.97 each. Probably could have gotten less expensive ones, but they were what I wanted. We left the ivory outlets alone and put a darker cover plate on them. Not crazy enough to have to change the actual electrical outlets.

The window trim was reused. It was primed and then painted over. The stool in the photos was built years ago by Wally and was navy blue. It was sanded and painted with the trim paint. The night table is a new piece of furniture that Wally designed and built for me for the room.

The butterfly canvas prints are three 18 x 24 canvasses purchased at Hobby Lobby for about 12.00 each. I used the wall paint for all of it. I used the stencil and put putty in some of them to raise them up. I painted the canvas brown and over a couple of days I stenciled the butterflies using two different stencils. One I already had and the other I bought at Michael's for 5.99.

The wall  mirror, clock, candle, candle dish, and (empty) picture frame are all from Ikea. Less than 40.00 for all of that together.

There is one more thing we will be putting on the wall above the table and later I will add some pictures to the brown wall. I have beautiful batik fabric to make a bed quilt this summer.

The cabinet with the doors on it belongs to Wayne and was built many years ago by Wally. It is my favorite piece of furniture he has ever built. Wayne will eventually take it with him, but for now I am happy to store it and use a drawer for my gym clothes.

Enjoy the photos. I just discovered that if you double click on a photo it will open the picture full screen and you can scroll through all the photos.


The room earlier this year.