I know I told you I was working on our dining room/multi-purpose room and really, I can’t wait to show you the progress but I’m still waiting on fabric for one more curtain panel to reach our doorstep and so I’m just going to slide in with a quick distraction!
Surprise! I’ve already moved onto sprucing up another room – the play room! This house is a three bedroom/two bath and right now, the kids are all sharing a room (it’s been awesome!) and so we’ve designated the third bedroom as a play room. We’ve got a functioning office space (which we really needed) in our multi-purpose room so, since we didn’t need a space for that, one room to corral all the kids toy’s in seemed like a great idea! And it has been! The only place we keep toys is in this room vs. a little bit here and there like in our old house. And as happens with kids around, messes get made, toys get strewn, but the great part about having a toy room is that the mess is usually contained to that one room…usually. ;)
Here’s what the third bedroom now dubbed play room looked like right before we moved in:
Just like the rest of the house, it was covered in tan.
Here’s what it looked like after we moved in:
And here’s what it looks like at this very moment:
It looks a little empty because we still haven’t pulled the play kitchen back in but we’ll get it filled back up soon…because I’m dying to get the play kitchen out of our living room.
I painted the room last weekend (and documented it all on Instagram stories…it was fun!) and I’m hoping to made and hang some fun curtains within the next couple of weeks. For now though, let’s talk about that paint job. Francesca from Fall for DIY planted a little seed in my head several months ago – painting two-toned walls. I really wanted to make the play room a fun space and lighten it up a little bit so adding white paint (Pure White by Sherwin Williams) with a splash of mint (Lyndhurst Celadon Green by Valspar) along the bottom seemed the perfect way to go. (Just a note about the mint color I used. One, it’s been a long time favorite of ours. You can see it in the kids’ bathroom in our old house here. It’s very similar to Sherwin Williams Sea Salt. It’s an old color of Valspar’s so if you want it, you have to ask for it by name at the paint counter at Lowe’s. They don’t offer paper swatches anymore.)
I’ve painted stripes before and taping off the bottom of the walls wasn’t much different as far as the process goes, but I tried a hack I read about somewhere many moons ago – painting the first color, taping, and then painting over the tape edge again with the first color of paint. Supposedly it’s supposed to seal the tape edge so that none of the second coat of paint can leak under it. Personally, I was a little skeptical. I always remove tape while paint is still wet because I’m afraid of peeling paint along with peeling tape but this hack required me to paint over the edge and then that paint had to dry before I painted the mint green.
Here you can see the white walls up top, the tape, and that bottom edge of the tape painted over:
(PS, in case you’re wondering, I tried to estimate how far Francesca painted her bottom paint color up the wall and came up with 47”. No math; all estimation but I like where I ended up. It’s not quite half the wall but higher than a chair rail would sit, which is exactly what I was going for.)
I didn’t slather on the paint but instead gave the whole edge just a quick, thin coat. If it’s too thick, peeling paint seems a lot more probable.
This is right after I got done painting and right before I peeled all of the tape off:
And whaddya know? Painting over the tape edge is a bonified hack! Look at that crisp line and zero peeling paint!
I’ve filed it away for later. There are bound to be more stripes in my future. :D
I’m excited for where this room is heading! Now let’s just see how quickly I can finish what I’m doing in the dining room so I can cross the finish line in here!
On another related note, not only would this two-toned wall look work in any room, but I was dreaming about how cute it would look in the girls’ future room if I used these sponges I’ve got* to create some fun scallops all the way around the room. It’d be as simple as sponging circles on with the wall paint right at the line.
Cute, right? And really, the options are endless. You could even create the silhouette of a city skyline or a little neighbordhood peeking above the bottom wall color.
Kid’s rooms are so fun. :D
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