One Room Challenge: Week 5 - Paint
Hey! Welcome to the blog.
Week 5 of the One Room Challenge is here! If you haven’t already, check out some of the other ORC guest participants here. The goal of this week was to finish all the painting in the dining room, which included: the ceiling, walls, metal trim around the glass door, and the tile grout. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish everything because I ran into a paint dilemma. But, I did get most of it done. Let’s get into it.
Painting the ceiling
Painting the ceiling was pretty straightforward. I cut in the edges of the ceiling first, and since I was painting the walls after, I didn’t need to be careful about getting any paint on the wall. I used a roller extension pole to reach our vaulted ceilings. The paint I used was Behr Stain-Blocking Ceiling Paint. It took me about 2 hours to finish the ceiling in the dining room area, and I definitely had a sore neck the next day! New paint on the ceiling always makes the room feel fresher.
Ceiling before painting.
Ceiling after painting.
Painting the walls
Benjamin Moore Coventry Gray (Left). Benjamin Moore Thunder (right).
Choosing a gray paint color for the walls was SO hard! There are tons of options and lots of undertones to look out for. A few weeks ago, I narrowed down the wall color options for the dining room to Benjamin Moore Thunder and Benjamin Moore Coventry Gray. Thunder is a warm-toned gray that can lean beige in certain lighting. Coventry Gray is close to a true gray but can have a slight blue undertone. Everyone I asked, preferred Coventry Gray over Thunder, but I liked Thunder better.
I stared at the paint samples on the wall for over a week and was convinced that I wanted to use Thunder. So I bought a gallon and got to painting, and it didn’t look quite like the sample. I think the store made my sample incorrectly. I finished painting the dining room to see if it looked better once it was dry. Two of the walls in the dining room looked okay, they appeared gray the way the light hit them, but the largest wall in the dining room looked SO beige. I’m not generally a fan of beige, so it had to go. I wasn’t ecstatic about wasting time and money, but it’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. I went back to the store and bought a gallon of Coventry Gray, and it turned out great. I will be continuing this color in the rest of the main living area, but right now, I am focusing on one space at a time.
First photo: Benjamin Moore Thunder (too beige). Second, third, and fourth photos: Benjamin Moore Coventry Gray.
Painting the metal trim around the glass door
First and third photos: before painting. Second and fourth photos: after painting.
The metal trim around our glass door is supposed to be a dark brown (it looks almost black), but it has taken some abuse over the years. It had scuff marks, scratches, and various wall paints all over it. So I decided just to get black enamel paint to bring it back to life. It looks so much better than it did, but I don’t love the enamel finish. If I were to do anything like this again (like on our windows themselves), I would use a different type of paint.
Painting is done . . . for the most part
Painting the tile grout is a task that I did not get to. If I had liked Benjamin Moore Thunder, I would have had time to finish painting the grout, but oh well, things happen. I will definitely be done with painting the grout before next week. If you want to see how I will be painting the grout, check on my Small Hallway Makeover blog post, I go over what I am using and why.
This is the shelf I am looking to re-create.
We are going into the final few weeks of the One Room Challenge, and for next week I have a big task to complete—The full-length floating wall shelves (see inspo pic on the right). I have never made floating shelves before, and these will be massive, so we will see how it goes. I have a plan in place and a list of new tools I need to make the job easier. Stay tuned to see if I can actually pull it off! If you want to see how it’s going in real-time, give me a follow on Instagram. Thanks for reading!