Paint Your Walls Archives - Page 3 of 17

As soon as it was time to start transforming my daughter’s nursery into a “big girl” room, I knew that I wanted an emerald green, four poster bed. Why? I have no idea – and this was long before emerald was the 2013 Pantone Color of the Year. Just like I had picked out the name Emma for my daughter nearly 30 years ago and it’s one of the most popular names in the US now. I guess I’m ahead of my time.

I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a bed that I’d end up painting, so I scoured Craigslist for months looking for the perfect candidate. It needed to be full sized. Its posts needed to be the same height on the headboard and the footboard. It needed to have a simple design. And it needed to be cheap.

I finally found one for $35 and I was so excited to bring it home. It needed much more work than I originally thought, but that’s a normal thing around here. A lot of blood, sweat and tears (and cussing, if I am being honest) went into this transformation, but in the end, I think I hit it out of the park.

The bed had an original oil-based factory finish on it (white), but an eager DIYer had painted black latex on top of it. Regular latex paint won’t bond to a shiny surface, so the black paint just scratched off. There was nothing I could do but scrape and sand the bed down to the original wood.

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When I painted my kids’ shotgun bathroom, I used one of my favorite paint tools – a PaintStick. Using a tube inserted into your bucket of paint, you suck paint into the handle of the stick and then push the paint through the roller. By not needing to use messy paint trays or having to climb up and down a ladder to constantly load a roller with paint, it makes painting a breeze.

Well, it’s a breeze until you need to paint a small space. In the kids’ bathroom, the end of the PaintStick hit the wall behind me while I was trying to paint the wall in front of me. It was really irritating, and I ended up doing some sort of PaintStick yoga to be able to paint the bathroom. It was far less irritating than using a paint tray, but irritating nonetheless. I never wanted to have to invent my own PaintStick yoga poses!

Then, HomeRight (the company who makes the PaintStick) sent me a PaintStick Mini – a new product that they had just developed. Y’all, it’s the same thing as a regular PaintStick, but just in a Mini Me version. Why couldn’t this have been on the market when I was doing my PaintStick yoga in the bathroom?!?

Compared to the PaintStick, the PaintStick Mini worked just as easily. Its pole is shorter and its roller head is smaller, so that makes it easier to get into tight spaces and corners. You do have to reload it more often than the original PaintStick, but that’s the price you pay for a shorter extension pole.

I’m working on my big 2013 project (hey, I still have a month and a half until 2014), so I decided to give my PaintStick Mini a whirl in a small enclave I have by my staircase. In all honestly, I was waiting for a pork roast to be finished in the oven and decided that this wall couldn’t go on being beige for one second longer. Am I the only one to decide things like that?

So, in 30 minutes I was able to cut in with a paint brush and roll this section (and a little more not pictured). The next day, I applied the second coat in the same time frame. In an hour total, I transformed this space from a blah blah beige enclave to something that feels exciting and new to me – and so much more modern than the builder’s beige.

Now I have two favorite paint tools in my holster – the PaintStick and the PaintStick Mini.

Disclosure: I have been compensated for this post by Homeright. All opinions – and PaintStick yoga poses – are my own.

A Diamond in the Rough: How to Refinish an Old Bed and Make it Awesome

How to Paint a Wall in a Tight Space