I have been posting a lot about painting over wall paper and the ease of chalk board painting in your home and now I present the pinnacle of combining these two fabulous techniques in a room I use every day. My BEDROOM. In our old house, we had a white room that I left fairly undone for the most part – we had a bed that we didn’t love, a view of a frontage road, and no motivation to change it – until we moved. When we bought this house, it had such charm and character and amazing wallpaper was the only thing we needed to really update (along with some flat paint you may have read about). As a reminder, the first floor was all papered in fairly neutral green/yellow or just kooky enough to be my style, in the bedrooms however, I have more amazing pictures of the wallpaper that greeted me waking, walking by, and at the end of every day.

For the most part my bedroom was relatively devoid of any paper peeling, but around the corners of my window as you can see above, there were a few blemishes. Nothing some pink spackle can’t fix! Previous blog post covered the general coverage of paint over these walls and I have been deciding what do do behind my bed. We love this window here and hearing the birds in the morning so we didn’t want to put a head board on our bed.

I thought that a feaux wood wall would look nice – but when I started looking at the costs for creating such a masterpiece, it ranged from $2-$12 per foot (our wall here is about 70 sq feet)! There a many many options for peel and stick wood planks or do it yourself “put wood flooring on your wall” videos but the first was on the high end of the per foot cost, and the latter was a 6-10 hour project that I was a complete newbie at. Painting – I have done before – so this is the route I decided to take!

This bedroom was another combination of 3 white walls, and 1 colored wall. I chose again to use the Krylon Chalkboard paint – tintable – in the case that I wanted to draw on it. The blue for this wall was much darker than anything I have painted that ISN’T straight up black chalkboard.

I sent my husband to go get the paint and since he was open to buying it, it seemed he was ok with the idea of this dark blue wall! Again, the paint didn’t match the brochure and the navy I wanted wasn’t available. So the original color he came home with was TOO blue.

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Lets talk about this paint computer at Loews – it is a very specific machine that adds the exact highly concentrated tints to create 100s if not 1000s of different shades of paint. With most paints, once you have created a color by adding to a base white paint – you can take it to other shades (easier if you are going darker of course) by putting in the paint formula number and telling the computer which color you want to get to – it then tells the paint tech which colors to add OR if it isn’t possible. In my case, the paint was off in shades with too much of some color and the computer said NOPE! At that point we were really just guessing so I basically told the Loews paint guy that I wouldn’t leave until he added some black color to the 2 small cans my husband purchased. I was wearing my mask so I think it was the stare I gave him (and the fact that I told him — VERY NICELY MIND YOU — that I wasn’t leaving until this paint was darker ha ha)

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Starting this project, I began with my mostly white and prepped room. The wall behind my bed was coated with 1 coat of off the white paint I used everywhere else. I was almost temped to leave this as I loved the crisp clean white! I forged ahead and got the room ready by spackling the borders on the windows then taping off the WHOLE DANG WALL! When you are painting white with white ceilings, any mistakes are forgivable and potentially invisible to the naked eye – but when you do dark blue paint, you gotta tape that wall off TIGHTLY!

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First coat of dark paint always soaks up the most paint and the first coat doesn’t look awesome! That said, I let each go at the wall dry for 3-4 hours and the additional coats left me with a nice rich blue! If you notice below that my bed is inclined, that is how I had to paint behind it! It was too heavy to move and I just used the motorized adjustable bed functions to move that sucker up and out of my way!

After the tape was removed I was finally able to put the room back together. The blanket was bugging me since it didn’t really match the blue anymore – and I am totally struggling with WHAT to draw on this wall. I had planned on an intricate flower or constellation drawing but I also just appreciate the wall as it is. I started looking for white bed spreads and remembered one I had purchased from IKEA – and went to order a KING size for my upgraded bed. Once I attempted to check out 2x, I realized this wonderfully neutral and light summer bed spread was out of stock. At that point I remembered that I already owned the same one, just an earlier version! Turns out, they make one size for Queen/King and you just switch the pattern depending on which size bed you have.

So there you have it – a refreshed bedroom after a year of stripes and blue fruit! If I took as long as I did to refresh my space at my old house, I would have waited years to accomplish this task. Of course a shelter in place order helps with at home projects (just ask the paint guys at Loews!) but there is a sense of urgency when it’s your forever home – I am so grateful for this space and I want to do it justice!