Wednesday, October 26, 2011 Down Down Guest Room
Hello Lovely! Today we are venturing into a room you have yet to see! Downstairs we have a tiny little guest room originally meant to be for a maid or au pair. It's the way to get to the only bathroom downstairs. The whole back corner of our downstairs is a reminder of how freaky things were back in the day. A maids quarters. With a separate entrance and everything. Accompanied by a swing door into the rest of the house. Totally makes me mad. Not that I am against maids or au pairs' or anything like that. Just that this house was built to shove them in a corner with a tiny room. That makes me mad.
With supplies from Cutting Edge Stencil, Behr paint from Home Depot, and two unused paint-brushes from our Purdy three pack, I was ready to conquer another guest room.
If I could take a moment of your time and vent....I am really upset with our Home Depot. We are there multiple times a week. We spend God knows how much money on supplies, and we even do the DIY check out most of the time. You would think we are model customers and would be treated 1/2 decent. Nope. The staff is always rude, like you are disturbing them to open the spray paint cage or don't know how to answer simple questions like "Where are your nails located?". We have been able to push that under the rug because there are only two hardware store by us, and True Value keeps minimal hours sadly. But this time, oh this time, I about had it.
This time, they refused to mix paint for me. They simply wouldn't color match. All four paint employees were too engrossed in their (colorful to say the least) conversation. Three ran and the one left behind refused to color match a swatch. So I picked from the shelf on this project. No matter how rude they have been in the past, at least I left with the product I wanted. Even if 1/2 the time they didn;t mix the paint right. So there. I huffed and puffed. Not happy.
I seem angry today. I promise I am not. Moving along.....I hope you will forgive the photo. It's so tiny it's hard to photograph the room properly. Here she is. Or was...
Just big enough for a daybed. This is a temp bed passed down by Joey's amazing Aunt and Uncle. It's done us well with all the guests we have packing the house each year. I almost want to treat this bedroom like a hallway or a foyer. Like an emergency-guest-back-up-room. I want it to be something you pass through to get to the bathroom, but don't spend too much time it.
I thought to get rid of the icky beige which was a total downer and painted it a crisp super light grey. Then I stenciled the wall (along with help from my friend Duane) across from the bathroom door with a grey a few shades darker. Keep in mind I wanted that color to be a rusty purple. But you know what happened.
The whole bad experience kinda disappeared when I got to work in the room. Dealing with Cutting Edge Stencils in a whole other story. Their products are high quality, current, and their team is so sweet and responsive. Earlier this year we stenciled our bedroom with Large Rabat, and this time we landed on something just as sweet for the downstairs guest room. Welcome, Kagami.
Pretty sweet, eh? This room is far from done. We have a little list for her which includes:
- Hang Art
- Find a better bed solution
- Find and install fan
- Find one small perfect piece of furniture
- Dress the windows
- Style and Accessorize
So what's the deal with the Purdy brushes we were testing out? First off, they clean up awesome with laytex paint. Pretty much good as new. Oil is super hard to work with when it comes to cleaning, but I have to say, it's worth saving the brush after cleaned! I also got a little daring when I realized how well the Purdy brush could cut. Are you ready for this?
I started taping off the room....then stopped. I didn't need to. So the final break down between yesterday's oil based review and today's latex based review is this:
- Easy to clean, and reusing is definitely an option
- No stray brush hairs at all. Zip. Nada.
- Can cut like nothing I have ever used before.
I am not dissin' blue tape, we know we need it for the million other things we need to tape off (like the stencil itself!), but it surely cut the prep time down 75% or more.
So there ya have it! Guestroom #2 in motion, Kitchen in motion, and pretty soon we will be revisiting the dining room!
Do you have a tiny and awkward room in your home? Share photos in the comment section below! We want to see how you dealt with the space!
Reader Comments (10)
I love the stencil you guys did in this room! Was it hard to stencil?? I have been contemplating stenciling one of our living room walls.. but have heard stenciling can be a pain. Thoughts? Advice? Thanks!! Love your blog too :)
xo,
Melissa & Virginia
The stencil looks great! I also had to say -- I think we have the same day bed! It was my husband's and we got to keep it. It resides in our guest bedroom as well, although we don't really have many guests. We're trying to spruce up the room and I just couldn't get rid of it. Thankfully it's a classic shape and well made. I imagine we'll have it for a while. Keep up the good work!
I use the purdy brushes too and LOVE them. I hate prep work, so putting blue tape on the trim always killed me... Finding the right paint brush made a huuuuuge difference :)
I totally hear ya on Home Depot, we've gotten some rude treatment before in our Home Depot. They must not have great hiring practices or something? I think it's helpful if you send in your constructive comments / criticism to the management... to hopefully prevent other people from experiencing the same thing. The room looks great so far!
@Melissa & Virginia no! it wasn't bad at all. the first few are scary and then it kind of flows. best advice is to you a "dry" roller (just a little paint on it) and use your non roller hand to kind press down the stencil so it comes out crisp.
@emily yea! it's super useful and not worth getting rid of! thanks for the kind words!
@jen preach on!!
@randa yea- totally stinky. it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't every single time. good luck with better service on your end!
ooh pretty!
so i know you bought off the rack, but what paint colours did you use/are you using for this room?
❤ Purdy brushes. Your stenciling looks great :)