After painting our two front rooms green and, unfortunately, before we learned the magic of a wall paper steamer, we knew we had to attack our bedroom area of the house. When we first moved our ever shifting piles of stuff into the house, Garth and I were sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of one of the small bedrooms. Clothes and hardware store receipts were tossed around that little room which was also piled full of my sewing supplies. It was crowded, very much like squatting in an abandoned house full of useless crap, and not a relaxing way to end each day in our new home.
Our bedroom, however, was a bit of struggle.
At our wallpaper removing party the children gleefully tore the paper from the walls in our bedroom. They could pull what appeared to be entire sheets of the stuff from the wall with a graceful rip. On closer inspection, what had been removed was only the top layer of wallpaper. The adhesive and a fuzzy, papery top layer clung to the wall for dear life. Not unlike the front hallway, there were areas that we were able to wet and peel off with ease and there were other areas that no amount of scraping and wetting could shake loose. The entire process would not have taken so long if we had discovered the glorious wall paper steamer before we finished the bedroom, or if I had not insisted that we also remove all wallpaper from the closet while we were at it. I mean really, if we are tearing down paper and nothing is in the closet, we might as well, right?
Scraping the paper in the closet took at least three additional days, and while this was not pleasant for our sleeping arrangements, when the bedroom was finished the closet was my favorite room of the house for a couple of weeks.
Once all the paper that we could scrape and scrub off was gone I took our garage-sale-new palm sander to the walls to remove the additional glue and fuzz that just wasn’t budging. This seemed to do the trick. After a week of scraping and three hours of sanding, the walls were ready to be primed!
We rushed to the paint store and, as we had learned in our green room, asked to have our primer tinted towards our wall color. The bedroom is blissfully smaller than the first two rooms we painted and has no molding circling the room a foot below the ceiling. This made the paint job move swiftly, as did using the proper primer. Soon, we were staring at our light, airy, and bright new bedroom! I have alluded to the fact that we will be using bright color throughout our house, and as you can see the bedroom is no exception. We choose a close approximation to Tiffany Box Blue and love the glowing results.
Before we could begin to shift ourselves into the room we needed to finish the closet. The former owners had installed mis-matched white wire shelving of various sizes. We removed all of this before removing the wallpaper, and patched the screw holes in the walls. The shelves were functional, but we needed rods to hang our clothing on. Here was the problem: the closet has plenty of space for both of our clothes but the super-slanty back ceiling makes it very difficult to hang a bar in the closet. This is certainly why there were so many levels of shelves installed. We scratched our heads and then ran to the hardware store and looked at galvanized plumbing pipes. This wound up being the perfect solution for us. We bought two long bars, four 10 inch connectors and a four corner connectors to create our perfect, sturdy, closet bars. To hang them straight took plenty of measuring and the use of a level, but once installed they now hold bunches of clothing and are not budging. We reconfigured the remaining wire shelving and now have an extremely organized and functional closet.
Why was this my favorite space for a few weeks? It was the only area of the house that was under control and at the time it felt as though it might be the only area we ever finished. Thankfully, as we have moved on to make bigger and bolder changes, the closet is no longer my favorite room.
Next week, I’ll show you more of the bedroom, some of the smaller projects I have tackled in that space, and ask for advice about some larger projects that still need to be started!
Great idea for the closet! Our bedroom closet is an awkward size, too, so we’ll maybe we’ll steal this idea.
Love the color!
I completely relate to your closet story. Whenever I move, I always fully unpack the kitchen first. Then when I’m feeling overwhelmed with the rest of the job–for me, it’s always been moving my work AND my life at the same time, since I’m self-employed–I go into my little kitchen oasis and pretend my life is normal for a bit.