First of all, I need to apologize – the “before” and “during” photos I took of this project were deleted or lost – I can not find them. So I have plenty of “finished” photos for you, and I’ll try to explain the simple steps as best I can without corresponding images. Just trust me when I say the upgrade of my guest room is a vast improvement on the cluttered hole it had been!
So, guilty fact – the sliding doors hiding my washer and dryer were old and busted, and finally popped off their tracks… over two years ago. Being my hoard-y self, I propped the doors up in the garage, waiting for the perfect “project”. I had already seen this post about headboards and thought it might be a good way to go with my plain ol’ guest room.
Fast forward to March/April 2012 – here’s when I finally got around to doing something with the doors. Now, granted, I’d had a son in the interim, which certainly is time-consuming, but…ahem. Now you know what my husband deals with when I tell him not to throw something away, because I have an “idea” for it. Poor man.
Anyways, I finally got a spark of inspiration, so I went to work. I already had the bedding, and I did NOT want to buy anything new if I could help it. I’d seen a really pretty yellow and grey palette on Pinterest, so I kind of had that in mind. I’d also seen this post on Pinterest, and knew I wanted to incorporate her tip on same colored paint in glossy and flat. So the seeds were planted.
***A quick jog down to the garage reminded me that the paint colors I used for this project included Behr Elephant in glossy, and Behr Charismatic in flat and glossy. This same jog also revealed that the black widow that had been living in our backyard relocated to the garage, along with her recently deceased mate. So now you know I faced down a nasty black spider to bring you this information. THAT is caring, people.***
The rest is fairly simple. First, I sanded all the doors using our newly purchased hand sander. There were some dings and dents, so I pretty much chose the nicest sides and ends of each door, since the whole thing wouldn’t be seen anyway. Then I spray painted each panel white.
Using our new laser level – sidenote: both sander and level were purchased for my husband, at his request. Both were utilized first by me. I’m not sure he’s actually used them yet – I painstakingly laid down painters tape to mask off where I wanted the block of yellow and grey striping to be. This process took a few days, with the panels laid out in our garage, and me squatting over each section, applying the paint in layers. I pat myself on the back for displaying some patience on this project, which I tend to fail at. But multiple light layers was certainly key!
I picked up some stencils at Home Depot and decided on the pattern you see here. These were AH-NOY-ING as hell to do. Thin plastic stencils, thick paint….ugh.Best advice I have for any stencil project is to first paint the stencil the color of the background. Once that’s dried, paint a few layers in your chosen color for your stenciled image, in my case the glossy version of the yellow I bought. When you are done, peel that sucker off slooooooooooowly…can not overemphasize the turtle speed you should use. Especially since I LOATHE turtle speed.
Once I deemed the panels completed, I then got my darling husband to cart them upstairs for me and help place them behind the bed in the guest room. Now, at this point, if you’re certain you’re happy with your project, it is likely the best idea to anchor the panels to the wall. Since our house is a rental and I’d exhausted all my patience by this point, and my mother-in-law was due imminently for a visit, I just placed the panels behind the bed and then shoved the bed hard against them to hold them in place. They’re just sitting on the carpet, and they’re not perfect pieces, so there’s a bit of an awkward gap between two of the panels. It annoys me each time I see it, so I simply stopped looking.
The power of ignore-it-ance.
So that’s it! A few other cute touches I added include the vase of faux yellow blooms – a nice clear cylindrical vase I had that I wrapped with double-sided tape and ribbon and filled with rocks and wine corks. (The corks more so because I was saving those for a few other project ideas – ahem – and needed somewhere to store them. Voila!)
The guest room doubles as my “library” and general storage room – what you don’t see is a large bookcase in the corner, and a DVD tower opposite the bed, both laden with books, movies, and various family pictures. Don’t even ask what the closet looks like inside. Better to just back away slowly. I hung a few of my maternity photos on the wall opposite the bed, since I loved them so much. Finally, I found a nice spot for a piece of art I’ve been carrying around since college.
Marilyn here was drawn by yours truly during my junior year of high school. I actually donated her to my art teacher, Ms. Scudder, but when I was a senior in college, my mom insisted I get it back, as she’d always loved it so much. Ms. Scudder was kind enough to return it, and I took no small measure of pride in the fact that it had actually been hanging in my old art room since my graduation. Mom never really had anywhere to put her, so I kept Marilyn with me and finally had a spot for her in our guest room.
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