Happy last day of 2012! I thought I’d end the year with a super awesome room reveal. WOO HOO!
Our sunroom has been in a constant state of flux for the past year and a half, it is an addition to the house and it is the room we use the most. We enter and leave through the side door, we let the dog in and out through the sliders, and we use it for seating (as opposed to the living room) more often then not. So my goals for this room have always been clear:
- It must be durable (every animal sits in this room all day long while we’re at work- claws and fur and all)
- It must be realistic for our lifestyle (we broke, yo, and cats = painful rug death)
- It must work with what we already have (ie, the bar and curtain rods are brown/bronze and I wasn’t going to repaint or replace them).
- It must be sexy (because I said so)
I think I have finally achieved that goal, and I’ve been sharing sneak peeks and progress on Facebook and Twitter for the past week. But what’s a room reveal without a reminder of the nonsense we started with when we first moved in:
Here’s the view from the kitchen looking into the room, at the end of the couch is the side door (cut off in the picture). This is the first room I saw when I toured the house.
And here’s the other side of the “sunroom.” It wasn’t very sunny… yet.
August of 2012 I ran a little one year later series catching up with each of the rooms, so you can check out the in between state here. That wallpaper lasted less then 24 hours and the room has spent most of its life with us a mossy green:
An improvement, but still not quite right.
BUT NOW LET’S GET TO THE GOOD STUFF. The mossy green wasn’t working and the room wasn’t special enough. So, I put two coats of primer on the wall, then two coats of Behr White Truffle Paint. Then I grabbed my handy dandy laser level and went to town:
Black Friday weekend this Black & Decker laser level was seriously discounted, I got it for $12. Basically it inspired this entire room. And basically I want to marry it.
Seriously, without a laser level I wouldn’t have had the patience to stripe this whole room, it curved around the corners and made life so so easy.
I used the laser level to mark off foot thick stripes throughout the entire room, then Frog Tape to tape off the stripes, then I pressed each strip of tape down with a plastic card to make sure it was stuck extra good. DO NOT skip this step. You’ll want to, but don’t. I’m not going to tell you this was a breeze, it took about five hours to tape off the whole room. So be ready to hang in there because it is SO worth it.
You’ll see two types of tape in the pictures- I used Scotch Blue tape for around the molding simply because I had it on hand. I used Frog Tape for my stripes- and I suggest if you want a very clean very clear line you do the same. Honestly, I never want to use Scotch tape again after this project. There really is a difference in the products (and I promise, I don’t know anyone at Frog Tape, it’s just my honest to goodness from experience opinion)- besides the crispness sof the line, the Frog Tape was way easier to pull off too.
But back on track… many hours later the room looked as so:
Bam! Tape stripes! I gave the white truffle color a day to dry and set before taping just because I was super afraid it was going to peel up (it didn’t).
It’s hard to tell in this picture, but to save paint I measured up a foot from the floor and down a foot from the ceiling and just painted the white truffle in those boundaries, since the top and bottom stripes would be gray.
The most difficult part of the taping was remember to tape inside the white truffle stripes, because the gray was the secondary color(Partridge Gray by Better Homes & Garden, color matched to Behr). I kept forgetting about that, and had to retape a few sections a few times.
Ohhhh! Ahh!!!
I’m not going to lie, I was so nervous the paint was going to bleed through the tape and I’d have a million zillion touch ups to do. But here it is, no touch ups needed at all:
Oh what crisp lines you have, Grandma! (anyone? anyone?)
Have I kept the suspense going long enough? Are you ready? I SAID ARE YOU READY?!!
WELCOME TO MY SUPER AWESOME SUNROOM!
My Nonna calls them “HGTV stripes.”
And once more, so your finger doesn’t have to scroll all the way up, here’s the before:
CYA NEVER, DARKEST SUNROOM EVER.
And the glorious after:
In case you’re interested, a quick source list:
- The lighter color paint is Behr White Truffle, darker color is Partridge Gray by Better Homes & Gardner color matched to Behr. They both have brown undertones in them that are hard to see in this picture, but definitely help in real life to tie in the brown furniture.
- The bar is from Bob’s Furniture
- The chairs were from the side of the road, and redone.
- The bench is from Christmas Tree Shops, but reupholstered.
- The yellow curtains were made by my Nonna, the slider curtains are thermal lined and from JC Penney
- The picture frames are from TJ Maxx
_________________________________________________________________
UPDATE: More tips, tricks, and info on painting & this room here
_________________________________________________________________
>
