Rome Was Not Built In A Day aka Our New Bedroom Is Taking Forever

When we decided to move our bedroom from the master at the back of the house to one of the rooms in the front of the house, in order to not be ten miles away from children's rooms, we decided to really put in the time and money to make it our own, a space we would really enjoy.   For the first time, I've really gotten to see some of my DIY ideas come to life from scratch.  We began the overhaul of this room in May and moved into it a couple weeks ago.  It's functional, but not quite finished.   In order to get my current blog post drafts list under 30 and also avoid a loooooong update post from scratch to finished when we dub the room complete, I have decided to do an interim progress post. 

So.

Here is what this room looked like on the day we moved into our house:

Nice sized room, pretty hardwood floor, ok sized closet and amazing natural light from three big box windows, but also a tiny ceiling fan, non-color walls and an ugly wallpaper border around the top of the room.   It served as our junk room for longer than I want to admit, but after I passed the CPA exam, I cleaned it up and turned it into a craft room.

The first step in this overhaul was paint.  We decided on a buttery yellow color called Lemon Drops from Home Depot to paint over the blah off-white that was already there.   The yellow seems to change shades in these pictures depending on the lighting from various times of day and also different cameras.  But it's just a nice soft yellow.  Not too in yo face.  

Next step was taking down the old, slim trim around the top of the walls.  I called in a pro for that part, aka my husband. 

Now, let's take a closer look at this wallpaper, shall we?  

Yeah...not super beautiful.  Rather than trying to remove it or dealing with the difference in texture if we just painted over it, we hatched a plan to simply cover it up.   This involved lots of really long, wide boards, lots of white paint...

...two people, a ladder, and a nail gun...

Bu-bye wallpaper!  Have a nice dark nap under there for all of eternity...

We later added quarter round along the very top to cover up the gaps caused by our 1948 ceiling, then caulked, spackled and touched up paint on all cracks and nail holes for a clean, seamless, beefy trim piece.

Next I set to painting everything else in the room white: baseboards, inside the window boxes, door trim, the closet doors and the back of the bedroom door (so it would match the inside of the room when closed).

See what a difference there is on the closet doors between off white and actual white?   And that was only one coat.

I love these crisp lines so much I wish I could take them out for ice cream.  

After a ceiling fan switcheroo...

...and installing nice new faux wood window blinds, we were able to move in.  We have since added new bedding, new nightstands and a new desk and are just lacking a few finishing touches before we can declare this room officially complete.   Let me just say that if everything turns out as planned, I will consider getting a Pinterest account for the sole purpose of pinning some pictures of this room.   JK, I'm still not Pinterested, but this room is gonna look fiiiiiiine.