Progress: The Playroom

The playroom.  To review, it had painted paneling that was a weird pinky-mauvy color.  Not my style.  Also, the paneling was really dinged up, not to mention the random paintbrush strokes from when the former owners painted the wall with the window.  There was a lot of work to be done to the walls to prepare them so they'd be smooth when we painted.

Here's the other view.

I had a really hard time choosing a color for this room.  It's a playroom so my idea was to make it a fun color.  But I already had a pretty bold color in that blue that's in the lr/dr on the other side of the playroom wall.  I didn't want them to compete or for the house to start looking like a circus!  I wanted to do green, I though, so I chose tons of green paint samples and tried to figure out what to do.  I like bright colors, so the greens I liked were brighter, kelly greens.  But I had a feeling they'd be a little loud on the walls, so I'd also chosen some more subtle greens, more in the sage family.  I just couldn't decide what direction to go.  I asked my friend, Kim, over who has a degree in interior design.  She suggested I do mostly neutrals with an accent wall.  So we chose a few greens and I got small samples of them.  I still didn't love any of them.  They were actually some of the more subtle greens, but when I put them on the wall they looked a little minty!  Not what I wanted.  From there I tried different colors of paint I already had from the kitchen (that's grays) and the blue from the lr/dr.  I got the idea that I'd paint the walls a light gray that was from the same color sample as the colors I'd chosen for the kitchen, and then add green and blue stripes on top of the gray to one paneled wall.  Now that there was a plan, we could start on the room.

To give you an idea of all the spots that needed to be fixed on these walls, here's a picture of one of the walls after it was spackled and before it was painted.  It looks like a kid with chicken pox!  And when I was painting I found more spots that I'd missed, although you probably wouldn't notice them if you're hanging out in the room.  You can also see all the colors I kept putting on the wall before I figured out what I wanted to do.  In addition to the spackling and sanding, we again caulked all the trim to make it look nice.  Oh, and by this point I'd taken to using our electric sander over every wall we painted to make sure that we smoothed out not only the divets, but also the rough spots that were all over the walls.

Here's the room now.  This is definitely a "progress" shot!  There are still boxes of books to be unpacked, which are waiting on the bookshelves to be built.  Some of our toy bins haven't been found, so the toys aren't fully organized and put away like I'd like.  Plus, this room was one of the dumping rooms for stuff when we first moved in, so there's a random thing here or there that needs to find its final home.  But it's livable and somewhat put together!

Once I got the gray on the walls I really liked it.  I realized that (as everyone had been telling me!) the colors of the toy storage, etc., would bring in plenty of color.  So after my insistence on having green in there, I stuck with neutral gray.  I also found a rug, the other part of my house-warming gift from my Grandma Brooks, that I really liked.  It had the same taupey-gray that I was using in the house and some fun turquoise and green that I'd wanted to incorporate somewhere anyway.

As you can see, not exactly totally organized, but the toys are accessible and mostly put away and there's an area for the kids to play.  I really should have taken a before shot with all the boxes in there for you to really appreciate how much work it was to get to this point!  :)

Still to do in this room:
1.  Organize Walter's little office area.  Additionally, and along with the doors and inside trim of the windows, it needs to be painted white.  It's currently the pale greenish-gray that can be found on the trim throughout the house.
2.  Curtains!  I like the window treatments on the doors right now.  They're wood roman shades.  But the other windows need something eventually.
3.  I'm planning on making a foam pad to go on top of the white bench that's under the window.  That bench will also be closed in on the ends with bead board, if things go my way.
4.  I want that window area to be a reading area for the kids.  The bench already had baskets under it with books.  But on both sides of the window Walter is going to build some bookshelves that attach to the walls made out of wood pallets.  Gotta love a free project!
5.  Somewhere down the list we'll attack the fireplace.  Walter wants to head up the mantle and I'd like to whitewash the brick.  I don't want to paint it because I like the texture and warmth of the brick, but I'd like to do a little something to it to brighten it up.
6.  Oh, and obviously we need to finish moving out boxes and getting the toy bins and other junk in there set up so it's not so cluttered all the way around the room.
7.  As I find things I like for the room I'll decorate the walls.  I have no plans for that yet.  We'll see what I come up with!