One Room Challenge: Craft Room (Week 3)

The transformation is now well under way in my craft room. For starters, that dodgy wall mural has left the building! Actually, it came off surprisingly easily. Hubby and I simply dampened the surface with a wet sponge, then gently used a paint scraper to remove the paper.

If you're just checking in here for the first time, you can catch up on the before pics here and the design plans for the room here.

There was still a bit of paste residue left on the wall, so we used a sponge to wash the entire wall with a sugar soap solution.

The room was now ready for a fresh coat of paint. I started with the woodwork on the windowsills and skirting boards (baseboards) by applying a coat of primer.

Next, I tackled the walls. As I planned on having a two-tone paint effect on the walls, I started by painting the upper half of the wall first.

Then it was time to paint the lower half of the walls ... and that's where the trouble started.

Despite having washed the walls after removing the wallpaper, some glue residue remained in a couple of areas, and I noticed that painting over those areas reactivated the paste. With the paler-coloured paint on the top of the wall, this didn't cause any issue, but it did with the darker paint. I don't understand why one behaved differently to the other, as they were the same kind of paint by the same manufacturer. But somehow, the darker paint produced a kind of craquelure effect on the wall.

I did check carefully that it wasn't just that a case of the paler colour hiding the effect, but it definitely only happened with the darker paint. Who knows, maybe it was just that we weren't as careful when washing the lower part of the wall. In any case, we are no strangers to problems with paint in this house. So, we just lightly sanded the wall and painted over it. This time, the paint took with no problems.

As you can see, I still need to go back and neaten the line between the white and green colours, but I'm waiting for the paint to cure fully before doing that. I always use high-quality masking tape to make a neat line, but there is still a danger of pulling the paint off the wall when it's removed, so I want to minimise the risk of that as much as possible.

You may also have noticed that I painted the skirting boards in the same colour as the lower part of the walls. To do that, I got a water-based satin finish paint mixed in the same colour as the emulsion on the walls. For the windowsills, however, I used the same paint as I had used on the door: Old White by Annie Sloan, sealed with a water-based polyurethane.

Once the room has been painted, it always feels so much closer to my vision for it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhogFkyArFT/?taken-by=thehousethatwill

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The room already looks so much brighter and fresher, and I can't wait to start adding the personality to it now. So check back next week, by when I'm hoping to have finished the paintwork and started working on the furniture for the room. And do also check in on the other guest participants on the One Room Challenge to see how they are progressing with their room makeovers.