Well, long-time-no-see! We have some catching up to do. I have been busy, I just haven't taken the time to share. Bad blogger. I would like to say welcome to you new followers. I really am so surprised when someone wants to follow my blog, but I am so happy to have you! I am going to show you my girls' room today, and then I will try to catch you all up with my various projects in the next week or two. For a little explanation about the room, it is at the top back of the house, and I imagine it was once just an attic room. When we bought the house, there was some serious gross-ness going on with the carpet in that room, so we tossed it out the window, literally. So, since then, there has been a plywood sub-floor for their room. Well, I had been seeing some ideas floating around blogland that I wanted to use around the house, so we decided this room would be our guinea pig. I love the look of plank walls and wide plank flooring, so this is what we were aiming for in this room.
For the floor we (the hubby and I) used luan plywood. I think that when we use this idea in other parts of the house, we will just use regular plywood, although this was a considerably cheaper alternative - $11 for a 4x8 sheet vs. $20 for a 4x8 sheet. The reason we will probably use regular plywood in the future is that, when we painted the floor, in some places the veneer sort of bubbled up a little, which I am fine with in this room, just not what I am going for in general. That description makes it sound worse than it really is, but I don't know how to more accurately describe it. It does add to the look of it being an older floor, rather than a new "perfect" one. We cut the 4x8 sheets into 8 in. x 8 ft. planks to start. Then we used construction adhesive (Liquid Nails) and small brads to attach the planks to the plywood subfloor, using pennies as spacers between the planks. We used the brads that work in our electric staple gun, so that made it much faster and easier. This idea came from Lori at The Frugal Farmhouse. She did such a beautiful job, I just had to try it.
For the walls, we used a material called hardboard. I had come across this idea in someone's blog, but can't remember which blog it was for the life of me. So, kudos to the person with the wonderful idea to make planks from hardboard! The hardboard was $7.50 for a 4x8 sheet, so it was very economical. The other benefit for us was the flexibility of the hardboard. Being an old house, or perhaps someone's poor drywall skills, when we got to working in the room, we found out the walls were quite wavy, so the flexibility was very helpful. We used the hardboard very similarly to the luan plywood, only we cut the planks for the walls and ceiling into 6" widths. We attached with construction adhesive and brads, with pennies for spacers, just like on the floor. After using this hardboard, I have a feeling it will show up in many different applications in our house, particularly in the downstairs which has plaster walls, some of which is becoming detached from the lath. We really loved working with it.
Well, here you see a picture of the walls painted, but before I painted the floors. I primed the walls and ceiling by hand, which took about four hours. After that, I was very glad to use a paint sprayer - so much faster! I used Zinnser BIN Primer, which is probably my new favorite primer. Seems to work really well on all kinds of surfaces and dries quickly.
So, here you see a picture with the floors painted. I have a new fondness for Martha Stewart paint. I really like her colors and I have been pleased with the coverage, but interested to see how it holds up down the road. Anyway, I used Martha Stewart's Vapor for the walls. For the floors, I used Martha Stewart's Sandpiper, which is a much lighter color than it looks in the pictures. That is because the floor sealer I used had a lot of amber to it and darkened the color considerably, but because the color was so light to begin with, I am actually happy with it. I am not exactly sure why the floor looks blotchy in the pictures, because it doesn't in person, but I will repeat "I am not a good photographer."
Here is another picture with all the painting done on the walls and floor. This is the view from when you walk into the door of the room.
Looky there - it is I! That is about all you will see of me working in this room, thank you very much. All my beauty output was going toward the room - not myself.
Here you can see what it looks like in the corner. Exciting, I know.
Oh, and here is a dresser. This is another part of this project. My three oldest girls share this room, and believe it or not, it will hold a twin bed for each and a dresser for each. Two of their dressers were handed down to us, very generously, from my mother-in-law. This dresser was a dark lime green with bright yellow knobs. I will tell you about the others when we come to them. So, to bring a bit of cohesiveness to all the mismatched dressers, I decided to paint them all the same color. When I saw the how the color of the floor turned out, combined with the wall color, it reminded me of Rie's girls' room from Home and Harmony. I remembered that she had painted the bedside tables a really lovely pink color, and decided that would be just the color for these dressers.
This is the wall you face when you come in the door. And the other two dressers. The dresser on the right was crackle-painted red, white and blue when I first saw it. The my mother-in-law painted it red for me to use in the boys' room when she gave it to me. But when I was working on putting this room together, I decided it would work better in this room, so it got the pink treatment. The dresser on the left was also given to us quite a few years ago from my parents' neighbor. It had been a light pine color before I painted it. I painted all the dressers Martha Stewarts' Ballet Slipper. It really is the prettiest pale pink. For some reason I think it looks a bit lighter than on the paint card, but I love the color. So glad I used it. The other thing that relates these dressers is that they all have the old round wooden knobs.
This is Elisabeth's dresser. On the orignal wooden casters. So pretty.
This is Rachel's dresser. Also on the original wooden casters. Love the details on old furniture.
As you can see, Rachel's dresser is beside the door. This is the back side of the door I made and wrote about in the previous post. I finally finished the back of the door!
If you notice the little gray dot on the ceiling over Rachel's dresser, it is a foamy stick-on piece (meant for the bottom side of furniture to protect the floor). Because of the slant of the ceiling, the door hits the ceiling there, so I put it there to protect the ceiling, and it seems to be working well so far. Much nicer than the gash that was in the ceiling before.
Here is a close-up of the wooden applique I placed over the mirror to finish out the door.
And this is Charis's dresser. It fits perfectly in its spot.
I love these keyholes in Rachel's dresser.
I love the pretty legs on Elisabeth's dresser.
And the curvy backsplash (I don't really know what you call that).
And I love the two levels of Charis's dresser and how much it stores.
And here you see the ugly spot. It is actually a repair job, the Sandpiper paint before the amber floor sealer. Believe it or not (and it is easier to believe in a house with 7 children than not) before I even could put the beds back in the room, someone damaged the floor! Elijah Grant, my sweet two-year old boy was playing with the clippy lamp I was using while I was working, unbeknownst to me. And he left it on, face down on the floor. It made a really cool circular pattern of black in the middle that faded out to a reddish brown and then to a dark amber color, and then eventually to the color of the rest of the floor. Didn't even have the hear to take a picture of it. Finally I sanded it and put the first coat of paint on it. Hopefully the final coats of sealer will blend in well with the rest of the floor. We'll see. At least it will be under Charis's bed. Speaking of beds - my dear husband made beds for the girls. His dad and brother have a metal-working business. My husband grew up working with his dad in the shop, so he asked to use the shop and made some beautiful beds for the girls. That will come in a future post, once they are finished and all the accessories are added. But I couldn't wait until then to show you my Girls' Room!
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