An ombre wall (guest room progress!)

Hello all! How was your weekend? Oh people…we’re finally getting summer around here and it hurts a bit. Looks like we have another week of high temps and then things get awesome again. I knew it had to happen…and at least now that it’s hot I’m now completely ready for fall. I wasn’t before. ;)

So I’ve had a specific project on my to do list for years – paint the guest room. A fairly simple thing, right? A lot of projects take me forever but this one may win for being on the list the longest. This room was my stepdaughter’s room and our guest room, and I felt sorry for those who would come to stay:

I mean…I know.

It was completely adorable for a 13-year-old (we did this when we moved in more than nine years ago), but it was a little much for anyone else. The wall was actually kind of special to us – soon after we moved in she and about five of her friends did all the painting after I had taped off those squares. There was a paint fight, lots of laughs and they had a BLAST.

I got new bedding for the room a couple years ago but still never painted the room:

 

And like most guest rooms this space got the hodge podge furniture that didn’t really work anywhere else in the house.

I’m on a house-wide decluttering rampage right now, and it’s taking forever. I keep getting sidetracked by little (and BIG) projects along the way. That’s how this redo started – with the decluttering and organizing in here I shared a couple weeks ago.

For some reason I couldn’t handle this wall one. more. day. The great thing is, I already had the paint I needed to change up this pastel wall:

I bought the paint about six months ago I think? I had a look in mind for those squares. I wanted to try to keep them since I knew if I just painted the wall I’d still see the lines of the squares. And I really didn’t want to mess with sanding it all down – I just went with what I already had. What better time to finish this up then in my no-spend August? I had all the paint tools I needed, so I went after it.

First up – taping. This is what took the longest part:

You can see there how the paint job by the teenagers wasn’t perfect – I never fixed it. ;)

I used my trusty Frogtape and had to tape off each side of the squares – years ago when I did this I used a two inch tape but the thickest Frogtape I had on hand was about 1 1/2 inches.

It took a while because I was trying to tape off just right so I didn’t see any of the old color. I also had to tape it so the new paint would cover the seepage from the tape I used the first time I did it:

Like I said, this took awhile. But it was good, mindless, relaxing work. Sometimes not thinking much is a very good thing. ;)

And then I was ready:

Months ago when I picked out the paint I went through a ton of options. Originally I planned to go with a gray in this room but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. This room is SO bright and cheery, and it could certainly take the gray. (Not all grays are dark and dreary.)

I wanted it to be light and pretty. I wanted to work with the bedding too, but the green in that is more of a chartreuse color – not exactly something I want on the walls.

So I went with something that didn’t match just right and I don’t think the world will stop spinning:

Yes, all of those colors.

I went ombre:

Obviously I went darkest (Pond Reed) on the bottom and moved up. All of the colors are from Porter Paints (I had them mixed them in a cheaper paint):

(See the story of that nightstand-from-the-trash here.)

I REALLY love it. Keep in mind nothing else is done in the room so you are seeing this way in between, but I like sharing progress as it happens.

The rest of the room got painted as well, but first I had to remove my horrible trim idea from years back:

I was trying to do an easy crown molding look all those years ago, and it FAILED.  I’ve learned a few things over the years -- one, don’t use two inch nails to install trim. Two, don’t use Liquid Nails, ever. Ever, ever, ever. Did I mention ever? Unless you are SURE you will never change your mind. 3. Thin, inexpensive molding doesn’t look like crown molding, no matter how hard I try. Ever.

I just painted over the glue for now but I’ll have to do crown or something to cover it up later. Nice.

I painted the rest of the room the lightest color on the ombre wall, Dew White:

Here’s another tip – covering blue walls with a light paint will take two coats. Get enough paint. ;) I didn’t and will need to get more to finish up a couple of the smaller walls.

There’s lots left to do in here, obviously. Drapes for sure and paint the old dresser:

The nightstand that matches that dresser got a redo a few weeks ago.

The room as is is very…dewy. :) But drapes and art and accessories will help to tone that down a little. Thing is – I probably wouldn't use this color elsewhere in the house, but it’s just so dang pretty and light in there. I fall in love with it more every time I go in that room. 

I’ve had this little garage sale chair forever, and I don’t know why but I love it:

Well, the shape of it I love. Not the 70’s fabric. I was sitting there yesterday thinking I could totally recover this myself. I have totally lost my mind. I’ve done it before and said never again.

That little foot stool thing won’t stay, it’s just here till I figure out what to do with it cause I love it. I’ll also DIY a simple headboard at some point too.

My list is long but at least I finally painted!! HUGE project done. Even if I get nothing else done in here for awhile it looks SO much better:

My plan is to still add some dark gray/black in here to play off the light green and black combo that I love. It will also be some nice contrast. I think it’s such a fresh look and I hope I can make it work.

Can you believe I finally got this done? THIS is why I need to do no-spend months every year. I’m getting so much done. I do have a short list of things I can’t wait to go out and buy on September 1st though. Is this month taking longer than most or is it just me? ;)

Using ALL of the closet space

So remember last week when I said I was going to decrapify all weekend? Well, I did. Most of the weekend anyway. I got two rooms done – the Bub’s bathroom and our guest room.

It’s a little weird that I would start there – probably the two least used rooms in our house. But I started a painting project in the guest room too (I can’t wait to show you – still not done!) so it just kind of tumbled from there you know? One things leads to another?

Well, it led to some major decluttering and a little DIY. I’m SO happy with how it all turned out.

So here’s the thing – bedroom closets stump me. I think they are huge chasms of wasted space. You with me? I just think that unless you have a built in closet system, there’s SO much space that isn’t used well. So for years I’ve been trying to use these spaces better – and until I can put something fancy in there I think this solution helps!

Let’s check out the befores of this closet shall we? It’s not pretty. I warned you.

On the one side I had installed some pull out bins (that used to be in the Bub’s closet) awhile ago, then we had some boxes of photos and a pile of luggage:

You can’t see there but there are always a stack of random pictures on top of those boxes (because I’m usually too lazy to organize them inside the boxes) that come fluttering down every time I move something up there. :) I found a bunch tucked into the suitcases.

And speaking of, that pile of luggage was a little ridiculous:

The placement of all of that was less than brilliant on my part, since it became impossible to pull out them out when we needed them. Duh.

And other side was waaaaay worse. A few weeks ago we had company staying and the Bub and I did a cleaning spree in here and quite literally stuffed things in this side of the closet:

On my last trip to IKEA I picked up a few (or seven) feather pillow inserts to use for a future project – and I just dumped them on the guest bed. So they had to go somewhere…of course stuffed into the closet (along with some others) made the most sense:

So I started pulling things out and organizing. The stuff in those pull out bins was mostly travel stuff (a few of the bins were empty) and I got rid of half of it. I disassembled the drawers and will be putting them into our closet next but that’s a whole other post. :)

My hubby used that steam machine a lot before, but now that he doesn't have to dress up for work every day he doesn’t need it nearly as much. So I closed it up and put it our closet for now.

Then because I was planning on rearranging the bed in there, I started pulling stuff out from under there too – I have the bed up on risers so there’s a bunch of space underneath. I keep other pillows and extra foam and stuff like that under there.

By the time everything was pulled out this is what I was dealing with:

Well the lamp shade wasn’t under the bed…but again, one thing led to another. :)

My husband came up the stairs at one point, stood there and said “Whoa.” Exactly. I’m pretty amazing that I had all of that in a closet and under the bed. I think anyway. Or something.

I counted 23 pillows that I found in that room – TWENTY THREE! Old decorative pillows, filler pillows and bed pillows. Twenty…three. I haven’t cleaned out this room in a long time, obviously.

So after the purging it was on to the next phase. I kind of hate that weird space to the sides of the closets – if you’ve got a lot of clothes then obviously that’s prime space, but in a space like this with no clothes it’s wasted.

To use it better I grabbed scrap wood from the garage and made some shelves:

I knew I wanted to keep that bin in there so I started right above that and just eyeballed the height of each shelf. This is so easy to do, really! I just used random pieces of wood as the ledge and screwed them into studs (mostly at the corners). Then I cut down pieces of wood for the shelf part and nailed them in to the supports.

You can see the how-to more in detail in my kitchen pantry post here or the wood shelves in the basement bathroom here.

I put some contact paper down to cover the rough wood – it’s easier and faster than paint in my opinion:

And then started filling them up with blankets!:

I could never get those blankets to stay up on the wire shelves above, so this is a GREAT solution. (Especially for that huge fluffy blanket!)

The other side looks better too – I only kept enough luggage for the three of us:

That bin in the middle is an old toy box from the Bub’s nursery and I put my extra fabric in there. I put it in that spot so we can still easily access the luggage and shelves. 

Here’s how it all looks, with before and afters!:

   

SO much better!! Ack. The great thing is, the fabric in that bin and the photos will all move to the loft when I get those built ins done. Which will be…??? But eventually there will be good spot for all of that too.

And did you see the EMPTY space on the upper shelf?? Totally awesome.

Oh, and the pillows I did keep (I took most to consignment and kept the fillers) I put back under the bed. :)

I’m off to work on my next room…trying to decide if I want to tackle the Bub’s room or not. It’s a little scary. (Shiver.)

No spend August is still going well – I can’t wait to show you what else I’ve been up to! Hope you have a great weekend! The weather continues to be amazing here so we’ll be outside quite a bit! (In between decluttering of course!)