Painting Panneling & A Bedroom Redo

When we first bought our house we had a friend stay with us for a while and this was the room that she stayed in, so we couldn't really work on this room until she moved out.  This room was dark, cold (literally), small and not functional.  Those closets in the picture below aren't really closets, more like bookshelves.

We tossed around ideas about tearing down the paneling and working with what we had behind it but then decided to try painting the paneling first and see how it turned out.

Since the paneling was super smooth the paint needed something to stick to we primed all the walls first using Zissner Fast Primer 2 (water base).   Some places will say to also lightly sand the paneling, we didn't and haven't had any problems with it.

After that was done I took and nap and went to work for the night. 

When I came home the next day this is what I found:

Yes....no more weird, non functioning, awkward closet, that wasn't really a closet.

The hubs did tell me that he had a "holy crap there's no turning back and I don't want to make the wife mad" kind of moment when he started tearing out the closet and realized he couldn't turn back.  Initially we decided we were gong to try to salvage it and make it work, but when he decided to rip it out he knew that I'd be a little frustrated with a huge mess upstairs when all I wanted to do was paint.  I was definitely surprised when I came home, but realized how much bigger the room was, so it was worth it!

The hubs then rebuilt a wall where the old closet was using standard 2x4's.

Once it was framed out, he put up the drywall, which made me happy cause I could start to see an end in site! 

After that was done the hubs installed the trim around the opening and we primed the wall and painted it Sherwin Williams Torchlight to match the rest of the walls in the bedroom.



We spent FOREVER trying to figure out the right stain to use.  Everytime we took a sample piece to Menards to find stain it seemed like it would match up in the store, but when we got home...didn't happen!  We tried a mix of Minwax Wood Finish Golden Pecan and Minwax Wood Finish Gunstock and even though the stains went on easy they just didn't work for our project.


Two things we learned from this project:

1. Trying to match up wood stain with a house that is 80-some years old is impossible....well maybe not entirely but we did not have the resources to match it up spot on.

2. Don't ever use knotty pine if your going to try to match existing trim, espeically if it's NOT knotty pine.

Lesson learned.

So I ended up painting that trim Dusty Yellow in Semi Gloss (from Menards) which was the same color as I painted the wall inside the opening (the wall was a flat).  I did not paint any of the other trim in the room because we are trying to keep whatever original woodwork...well...original and we actually like how it turned out.

We love the hardwood floors in our house, but we ran into a few problems when it came to this room:

1. The windows are old so at times, depending on how the winds blowing, this room can get a little cooler.

2. The floors in this room were about 3/4 of an inch shorter then the other rooms, so there was a trip hazard when going from this room into either of the other two.

3.  The person we had staying with us when we first bought the house thought it was a wonderful idea to put deep gouges in the floors.

So....we had also decided to buy carpet for the room.  We went to a bunch of local retailers to do some carpet shopping and found the carpet we bought at Carpet Mill Outlet in their clearance section.  If you are in southeastern Wiscosnin and looking for carpet I would definitely recommend going there! The owner was extremely helpful and knoweldgable.  We were also able to save some money because my mom's, boyfriend's (who goes by the nickname of BD), brother knows how to install carpet, so we got some help there!

Once we had the carpet installed, it made such a difference! The room is so much warmer (literaly) and more finished.

So for a recap...

We went from this:

To this: