New house update: Playroom

When we moved in three months ago, the downstairs extra bedroom bothered me the most.  I'm sure if you look at the pictures, you can easily see why.  The teddy bear border was totally creepy and the dark paint pattern made the room look like a cave.  I absolutely hated it and in fact, we considered not buying the house because the room gave me the icks.  (Hey... it's real thing.)

 

 

The walls had this dark purple rag painting on the walls and that border absolutely had to go.   The whole house, including this room, has the oak trim and doors which isn't really my taste. (It's in the rest of the house too... we'll get there.)

The whole house also has popcorn ceilings which doesn't help the cave-like feeling.  We are taking them down as we update every room in the house and is actually easier than you would think, just a tad messy.  A post on that is coming.

Who wouldn't want to stare at this everyday?

 

Because of my intense hatred for this room and because we had never taken down popcorn ceilings or painted trim before, we chose this room to do first.  We figured if we screwed up terribly learning these things or hated the way it looked, we wouldn't use this room much and no real harm would be done. 

 

However, now that the popcorn ceiling is down and everything including the trim and doors has a fresh coat of paint, I love this room.  Like love it.  We decided to turn this room into a playroom for the endless amounts of toys we have and use the closet for storage.

 

                                  

                                    

 

 

 

 

Isn't it amazing what paint can do?  It completely brightens up the space and makes it look larger.  Taking down the popcorn ceilings got rid of the shadow in the room and really made the room feel more open.

 

Painting the trim and doors while tedious (three coats of primer + two coats of paint), actually went fairly quickly and in my opinion makes all the difference in this room. 

 

Seriously, the expression on Caleb's face when he saw this new room full of their toys was pretty priceless and worth all the work.  I want to find (or create!) some more colorful artwork for the walls but other than that, we are pretty darn happy with how this room turned out. 

 

Now we just have to do every single other room in the house.  I should mention though that luckily this room is the only one with really objectionable paint choices, thank goodness.  The rest of the house is an off-white with that oak trim and doors.  Pretty boring (!!!) but at least tolerable as we work our way through the house.

 

Next up is the main floor powder room... stay tuned.