Whimsical September

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Guest Bedroom Overhaul Progress

Usually when I paint a new room, I have to get my mind right to get in there and get it done fast. I’ve said before that I don’t like having lots of messy painting materials hanging around for days and days (is that OCD?!) , so I usually just take advantage of every time Hadley’s sleeping to work, work, work for a couple days straight. 
Of course I usually collapse afterwards, but I’m always glad to cross a task off in my dream home book!

This basement bedroom though. 
It’s quickly knocked me flat on my butt! I’m exhausted, and though I’ve been working on this room for what feels like weeks, we’ve still only put a dent in the work that needs to be done.
This is the only official bedroom in our basement (the other two are considered non-conforming because they don’t have easily-accessible windows). We’d like to use this room as our main guest room because it’s spacious, has a full bathroom attached to it, and gives guests plenty of room to spread out downstairs. 
When we moved in 10 months ago it had brown doors, brass hardware, and some very random deep blue carpet. I absolutely couldn’t stand the blue carpet, so getting it up and outta here has been high on my priority list for a while.

It also has an oddly massive walk-in closet that needed some TLC as well. The shelving was never treated, and the walls looked like they used to be canvases for children to paint and color on (something you can’t see well in these photos).

The first thing we had to do was get the carpet up. It was actually in phenomenal, near brand new condition, so we decided to offer it for free on a Facebook Buy/Sell/Trade site to whoever could come and rip it up/haul it off. Because this room is quite spacious, we figured somebody could really use the carpet.
Sure enough we had many requests for it within just minutes, and later that night a sweet couple showed up to take it away. They were so thankful for it, and we were glad we went this route of getting rid of it. Plus it saved us a ton of energy and maybe a little bit of money too!
We did not give away the pad with the carpet because it’s a super thick pad that’s also near brand new condition. The couple that took the carpet didn’t need the pad anyway, so that worked out well!
Backing up a bit, I painted the three door frames back in December at the same time that we had new doors and hardware installed.

It’s always the projects that I anticipate being the easiest that are the hardest and vice versa. I expected painting this bedroom and closet to be a cinch because I wouldn’t have to worry about covering the flooring, but it’s still been incredibly time consuming.
Things we can check off our to-do list so far:

  1. Ripped up and hauled off carpet
  2. Painted trim in closet and in bedroom (it took three full coats until it looked good – sigh)
  3. Caulked the trim all the way around the whole bedroom and closet since so much of it had pulled away from the wall
  4. Painted the closet shelving (this also took three full coats of paint since the raw wood soaked up so much of the paint)
  5. Took down the old blinds 
  6. Painted the window (this also took three coats because the grain continued to show through)
  7. Painted the bedroom walls
  8. Painted the closet walls
I used Dutch Boys Ultra White for the trim, window, and closet shelving, but I wouldn’t actually highly recommend this paint. Our handyman originally started painting our trim with this before we let him go last fall (long story), but we decided to continue using this paint for the trim since it’s what we started with.
I painted the bedroom walls with Valspar’s Tempered Gray (colored-matched at Home Depot) in a satin finish. Remember me saying how much I loved this color after using it in my upstairs half bath?

I painted the bedroom closet walls with Sherwin Williams’s Balanced Beige. We had almost a whole gallon of this paint left over from last fall when we painted the living room and hallways, and I really didn’t want to spend money on new paint just for a closet. I actually like the way it looks anyway!
Now that the painting is done, we need to get a move-on with the carpet. I’ve spent the last week running around to different companies getting estimates and looking at samples, but everything is just so dang expensive. Trying to find something that blends with the rest of the basement carpeting that’s not a fortune ($600+) is proving really difficult. Do you see in the picture below where the blue carpet meets the basement carpet? That’s what I’m trying to semi-match (even though we really can’t stand that carpeting either). 

If this were our forever home we probably wouldn’t mind shelling out good money to go ahead and put in all new carpeting downstairs, but at this point all we want to do is get things updated and looking nice in the meantime before we sell in a couple years. 
Such a learning process!
Here’s some “before and current” pictures for fun! I hope to be back before too long with the finished room. 
Before…

Currently…


Before…

Currently…

Before…

Currently…

TDC Before and After

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