Since repainting my living room in Dulux’s lemon tropics over the summer, I’ve woken up in bed most mornings with the thought of what to do about my ever-pale bedroom. Since I moved in, it’s been white and in the winter months, the room feels extra cold.
Last weekend – in fact, several weeks after buying the paint for this re-decoration (B&Q sale) – I decided to get my brush and roller out again.
As it was, for almost 11 months…
It took longer than expected to clear the space – it is so easy to forget about the things we hide within the deepest and darkest corners.
Not only is this room less than half the size of my living space but I was fortunate to have one wall surface partly concealed behind a boarding of white chipboard – which I can only presume is hiding some symptoms of rising damp, as evident in other parts of the property.
This wasn’t to be my best attempt at cutting in. I now expect to hit the ceiling a few times with the roller but this time, I caught it plainly with the brush I used around the edges.
I chose another Dulux shade for this, with the landlord’s consent: sea blue. I hadn’t previously thought of blue of being a particularly warm color but really, almost anything is an improvement over white (except magnolia, of course…).
First coat on and with much masking tape to be removed.
At the end of day 1 (a Friday afternoon, no less), I had to throw my bed back in temporarily so that I could get some sleep that night – I’ve somehow misplaced the photos of my living room at that time but it’s fair to say that the settee was inaccessible! In the end, I quite liked the minimalist-look with just a bed and side table in situ.
Too much rolling or too little paint?
I’d hoped to finish this room in a single coat but I wasn’t at all satisfied with my obsessive ‘over-rolling’ in certain areas. I then left it a day before completing the job on Sunday.
I also used short-pile rollers for this, after reading online somewhere that they were ideal for emulsion paint. However, they weren’t available locally and still cost a fraction more than the medium-pile rollers I used last time. I couldn’t see much of a different, if anything, although the fact that I was re-coating a frequently uneven series of walls may have something to do with that.
This was taken before I finished painting around the window.
It does look rather ocean-like under natural daylight but in the evening it takes on more of a violet hue, which I really like (this is probably mostly due to the lighting).
I’m going for a slightly different arrangement this time around, with my close running down the opposite wall (maybe even adding a little insulation from the window’s cold) and my bed closer to the wall that divides the bathroom.
I may well change the curtains, which were in place when I arrived. They’re fairly heavy but they let too much light in. I’m also thinking of looking for a (second-hand) bedside table with more of a ‘lighter’ leg-based design. I do not need all three of those drawers.
I managed to get some paint on the carpet (I reckon I stepped in it, first) but later discovered that WD-40 is an excellent product for cleaning, even after the emulsion paint has set hard. Anything that hit the skirting washed off easily with a damp cloth.
Again, this is one of those improvements that allows me to sit back and appreciate my achievement. With every waking morning and the close of each day as I return to the comfort of my bed.
Thanks for reading.
