Project 6: Redo the Orange Bedroom Closet

This is our surprise project! We decided to add something fun to the bedroom upstairs and continue our exploration of color.

The shelf in this closet was pulling away from the wall - the nail holding the rod and shelf in place had been more than half-way yanked from the wall. My guess would be that someone placed too much weight on the shelf/rod for many years.

So we pulled out the shelving unit, which went fairly smoothly. I used a crowbar on one side, and accidentally poked a hole in the wall. So we used our new patching drywall skills to fix my mess!



N was much more methodical on the other side of the wall, where he first exposed the nails, dug around them, and then carefully removed them leaving no damage except nail holes.

Then we moved on to texturing the newly exposed areas.





After the texture was done, we painted the ceiling white, and the majority of the walls yellow. We marked out how the stripes would be placed in the closet, and where the yellow would be exposed we painted a second coat of yellow paint.







Then it was time to tape the walls. This part of the process was very time consuming. The pattern we decided on was to have tweleve inch stripes of yellow and red (the yellow from the bathroom downstairs, the red a new color). N and I were concerned that it might look a little too much like a circus tent, so we decided to include a two-inch orange stripe in the center of the yellow stripes.

The taped closet:







Close up detail of the tape:



Although we taped the closet, we weren't sure if the paint would bleed through the tape or how neat our lines would turn out. We decided to paint the small orange stripes first:





With the tape off:





We were actually really happy with the orange! The lines were fairly straight, and where the lines isn't straight, it's a natural bleed out onto texture. The stripes aren't too fussy. Now it was time for the red:

I had bought a quart of this red paint (COLOR NAME) at Lowe's, and when N opened it up the paint was much thinner than we were used to with the Valspar paint. This was both good and bad; the good: the paint was thin enough that one quart could completely cover the red sections of the closet (but only just). The bad: the paint was very thin and spotty.

Red paint with tape up:







Even after a second coat (with a new full gallon of paint that was the usual consistency), the tops and corners of the red were uneven. Also, the thin red paint had leaked under the tape quite a bit in some areas, so I went back with a small brush and covered some of the red spots with yellow, and with another brush went over the weak spots in the red:





The last of the can of red paint:

Project 5: Fix the upstairs bath, Part III

Another project begun during my family's recent visit was removing the old vanity bar of lights from the upstairs bathroom and installing two new lights in its place. The old lights was removed, and a larger hole was cut so that we could better access the original electrical box, and then two smaller holes were made at equal points away from the original hole, and two "old work" boxes were installed.

My grandparents, mom, and N worked on connecting the old wiring to the new, and later that week N and I installed the light fixtures and I began to patch the drywall. N actually cut the piece, and then I glued it in place and began to mud it. It's funny, because since then I've patched two other holes (one in the blue bedroom, the other in the closet of the orange bedroom), so it's been wonderful to know how to fix the wall when it's damaged.









We still have a lot of work to do in the upstairs bathroom, but we're putting it on hold for a while to consider what we'd like for the cabinets/sinks/etc.

Project 4: Redo the second bedroom, Part III

The weekend my grandparents were visiting they helped us install a new fan (actually the old Hunter ceiling fan from my childhood room in a David Weekley house similar in some ways to this house).



N and I picked out a color for the bedroom. We considered the artwork we wanted, the other colors we have selected in the rooms near it (green and orange), and our preference for bright, striking color. This shade of blue is Valspar's Enchanted Sea.

A couple of Thursdays ago N removed the remaining baseboards in the room, and I began taping off the moldings around the windows and doors. After sanding and texturing the patched areas of the walls, we began to paint every area except the patch from the previous door.

I decided to remove the plate for a telephone line that was run into the bedroom, and left it as is in the closet. There was a bundle of wire/cable that ran up from the electrical box through the closet ceiling and into the attic. I simply shoved the cable up the hole in the ceiling, and patched the bed room wall. There was no true electrical box: the phone line and cable were hanging out next to a two-by-four. I kind of made a mess of the wall cutting a hole to pull out a non-existent box.





N sanded down the wall patch (after a disastrous attempt at painting it - did not do a neat enough job with the MUD), and we spread out the patch significantly.







But, not enough. After N finished painting most of the room and everything dried, we realized that it was not as smooth as we had hoped. N sanded the area again, and then applied MUD. Less of the area needed sanding/mudding, which is a sign that we're getting closer to the right job. Here's a spot with a little of texture on (a different texture - the knockback texture without the knockback).



Pictures of the painted room:









Meanwhile, I sanded down the window sills and painted them with the good white alkyd paint. They and the door frames and doors will need to be painted completely.