You guys. This was not my intent. I did not dive into this makeover thinking “lets take 3 weeks to make a giant giant mess in this room” or “Let’s do every step to finish this space in reverse order, and make the work twice as long.” Live and learn right? By the 9th room, I’ll have this down pat.

To start, last week I painted the room, which you might have seen when I talked about the window trim. What you didn’t see was the huge disaster I made because I bought a can of paint off a swatch, which you are never supposed to do. Always pick a color or two, get a sample, paint the wall and review the color in the daylight, nighttime, Tuesdays, etc. Well I rarely have the patience for that, and even if I did, its a 50 min round trip to get samples (which doesn’t seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I drive a lot during the day for my job, so I HATE driving in the evening). So I picked a color and got a whole gallon. You can imagine where this is going; I didn’t like the color. So I decided to mix my own, since my paint collection has rapidly been growing. I mixed the paints on the floor until I got one I liked, but I accidentally dripped quite a bit on the carpet. I loathe that carpet and it will be replaced eventually, I just was not thinking about putting a tarp down until it was too late. Long story short, I found the paint color I liked best and painted the walls

Once the room was painted, I put up the first layer of crown molding, which is baseboard upside down. The crown molding will be on top of that, so the whole thing will appear beefier (I’ll show this in a future post) Once I completed the first layer, I smooshed the crown up against the ceiling and realized our popcorn ceiling texture was pretty heavy and I wouldn’t be able to install the crown without removing it. Eventually, all the ceilings will be scraped, but I was NOT planning on doing it right now! So I thought, “self, what if you scraped the ceiling just enough around the edge that you could put the crown up and scrape the rest later? That way you can move forward on the and get it done. Why, self, that is a marvelous idea.” *mentally pats self on the back.

As you can imagine, that is not how processes work around here, and apparently I forget this lesson between each project and must learn it over and over. Sigh.

No floor protection, remember? So I did the perimeter, with texture coming off anywhere from 3-10″away from the edge. At this point, with the room cleared, the ceiling started, and the job only being half done, I am deciding it would be best just to do it all now. It is the best time, really, and then it will be d-o-n-e in this room. That is my weekend project, hopefully I can get the crown AND the ceiling done before Monday. Here’s what I’ve been staring at:

It took over an hour to vacuum the entire room, so I have put plastic down for the next step. See, I can learn! Anybody else scraped their ceilings before? If anyone wants to zip on over for the weekend, it could be SUCH a blast:)