Once I decided to embark on this, I thought "Sure, let's just see some paint color first" and threw this bright and cheery color on the wall. I had no idea how much work was ahead of me. I started out with just with a touch of color.
I loved the color! So then I took a huge breath and took my trusty old crowbar and took off the first section. What I discovered was 30 year old glue that will often come off and stick to the wainscotting taking most of the wall down to the paper off with it. Sometimes it sticks to the wall though and that was a real ugly mess to get off.
Since I am no stranger to a bit of spackle, I patched what needed to be patched after hours of scraping the old dried glue off with a chisel and my hammer....yes, that SMALL wall took a few hours of scraping. That glue has been stuck there for 32 years (give or take) and it wasn't letting up the fight for anything. The one thing I knew I wasn't going to be able to hide was the chair rail line. Behind the panels was straight drywall with texture on it. No paint. The above had the original paint, the red paint with the sand stuff in it from the previous owners, the layers of primer and the pony tail color paint on the top. I could try sanding down and spackling the edge down a bit, but it was impossible to hide such a difference in layers.
What can you do right? We don't mind how it turned out anyway. Its the playroom and we love it. A little extra line isn't going to change that. Here was that first wall and corner after spackling and the first wall of color up there.
As you can see, I also decided I wanted white trim. My hobby is woodworking so while I love wood in its natural state, I just LOVE the way white trim looks and makes a room feel. So for the first time ever I painted the wood trim. We left the door as it was. It looks a bit odd we know, but we kind of like it and I didn't have the energy to pull the door off the hinges just yet. Perhaps at some point. For now, it works since we have a lot of wood furniture in there.
I loved this picture because it really showed what a difference it made removing the wood panels and changing the paint color. Its like a before and after picture all in one picture.
So I moved on to each of the walls and it took hours to scrape all that glue from all the walls. All in all it took probably a month of weekends. Mostly because with a 1.5 year old and a 4 year old I could really only work on it while they napped on the weekends and for only 2 hours each night once they were in bed. At the time I was working 6 days a week and during the week I was working 9-10 hour days. I would hurry home and get here just in time to put the kids to bed and grab a bite to eat and then get back to scraping and spackling. I don't think I slept much during January and into February. :-)
The other walls took a lot longer to do, but they gone done. I wasn't going to leave it half done. I even bought new trim (cheated and bought the already white trim) and that really made the room look amazing. Here is the rest of the transformation.
Pretty schnazzy! Stay tuned for the new coatrack and shoe rack for the corner of the playroom.
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