Guest Room refresh underway

This weekend we spent almost all our time working on the guest room. DIY involves a lot more physical effort than my cushy desk job, so this was good preparation for me for the can’t-get-here-soon-enough gardening season. We started off, as you may remember, with a fairly plain room with pale pink paint on almost all surfaces.

Saturday we started by prepping, which included a fair amount of spackle, as well as K discovering that the vent cover that’s been in there since before we moved in isn’t actually the same size as the vent. The previous owners apparently figured that an inch or two of carpet space on all sides wouldn’t really matter.  So anyway, we used a vent cover from another room to make sure we knew what size it needed and got a replacement.

Another part of the prep was removing The Hatch, or the access panel to the bath plumbing. I hope that we never need to use this, but I’m afraid to cover it permanently because that would sort of be like asking for a leak, right?

We’ve noticed, when replacing outlets and light switches and whatnot, that the builders or somebody really didn’t care to use a sharp tool when cutting drywall. What do you think they used here? Butter knife? Spork? Elbow?

Former owners also did an extremely poor job of painting (this is true in all areas of the house). They subscribed to the glob-it-on school, and they LOVED to do something that has become my pet peeve: painting the wall and the trim all the same color all in one big, nasty, drippy paintbrush-full. The theoretically once-crisp edges of the hatch panel are definitely not anything akin to crisp anymore.

I also got a nice surprise when I removed the cold air return vent:

Got some extra bank statements? Just throw ‘em in the vent. Builders pencil? Same thing. Hershey’s Kiss? Wait, WTF? That’s too big to fit in the vent – did a critter carry it here? It did not appear to have any teethmarks, so that seems unlikely.

Brodie was trying to simultaneously hang out with us and stay out of the way as I moved stepladders and paint cans every few minutes. He was less than amused that we weren’t really paying him that much attention.

Want to know what happens when you glob paint on really thick on top of myriad layers of other paints that probably weren’t the same kind? Giant freaking peeling spots! Yuck.

Finally, you can see some color! This is the blue that we did on three of the walls. K is so happy to be painting! (Not really.)

And here you can see the first coat of brown up, contrasting with the blue. I am so, so pleased with the colors we chose.

Despite attempts by the previous owners to make it impossible (hardware installed UPSIDE-DOWN and INSIDE the ceiling so you can’t move it), Karl replaced the light fixture with this lovely one we got from the Despot. We had purchased a different one awhile ago, and then I decided it was too boring.

The hardwoods in this room are not too bad, but are definitely the most worn of any of the rooms we’ve exposed so far. Most of them will be covered by the area rug anyway, so for now, good enough.

Now that the carpet is gone, I can open the closet doors without struggling! We haven’t painted these doors yet but will do so soon. I am debating between painting them blue to go with the wall or painting them the off-white (“Innocence”) I used on the trim. What would you do?

New heat vent cover! We discovered another issue – the actual ductwork under this vent was all warped and not meeting up with the sides of the hole in the floor, leaving all kinds of lovely space for heat to escape into the basement. Joy! K was super-handy as usual and fixed it.

Here you can see the brown, the blue, and a tiny peek at the off-white of the window sill, as well as the area rug and the hardwoods. Oh, and Brodie’s butt. (Note: this was before the second coat of brown went on in the corner, so that looks a little sketchy.)

And that’s it for now! Yesterday I painted the trim for around the door, closet, and hatch, and we still need to cut and paint the base molding. We’re almost there!

More pics at flickr.