The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 2: The Walls

So the goal is to build all the furniture for my son’s bedroom, as explained in Part 1. 

Here’s a reminder of where we started:

I listed all his bedroom furniture on Craigslist:  headboard, frame, mattress, bedding (including the pirate quilt I made—that was hard to part with!), dresser, desk, and chair.  It sold all as a set, so he ended up with a bare room pretty much overnight!

That was OK by me, though; it’s much easier to paint an empty room!

My boy wanted stripes, and this was the quilt we were able to agree on for the basis for his room.

The first thing to get painted, though, was the CEILING!  In this house the walls AND ceilings are all the same beige.  I am NOT a fan of beige ceilings, so someday they will ALL be painted!

It’s amazing how much a just changing the ceiling color lightened up the room (I used Sherwin Williams Eminence Ceiling Paint in Creamy).

We decided to pull the green out of the quilt for the wall color.  Again, we were trying to lighten things up a little (color is Sherwin Williams Super Paint in Rice Paddy).  Sorry for the cell phone picture here!

Next step was the give the walls a little character.  I taped off a wide stripe and painted it the same white as the room trim…

…the I used MORE tape to divide that large white stripe into some smaller stripes.  I looked really good climbing around the room with three rolls of tape on my arm, like bracelets!

And this is how it turned out!  I have to tell you that the paint bled LIKE CRAZY on the red and blue stripes, and I have no one to blame but myself.  You can get good results if you really seal the edges of the tape well with a plastic scraper or credit card.  You get GREAT results if you do that AND paint over the edges of the tape with your base color.  You get lousy results if you skip step one, even if you do step two.  Ugh.  I had a lot of touching up to do…

…but you can’t tell now!

Next step….I promise I actually BUILD something!