American Foursquare Remodel 15 - Spare Bedroom to a Sitting Room

I decided to make one of the bedrooms a sitting room - perfect for the TV that I don't watch. And maybe for the antique trundle Singer sewing machine I recently acquired, once it's refinished and refurbished.

Two matching love seats were left in the house. The colors and style are not my current taste, but the love seats are in good enough condition for now.

The walls started out as painted wallpaper. I remember the original paper in here - a dark juvenile print with galactic spaceships, astronauts, stars and planets. Cartoons, really. Awful.

So my parents painted it pale pink. Like the bathroom. Softer and more subdued for a bedroom, certainly, but not quite right for a sitting room.

 

The right way to do this room would be to strip the painted paper, of course. But it was in pretty good condition (visible wallpaper seams notwithstanding). So I decided to simply paint it. Brown, LOL. 

Actually it's called Cardamom. I first saw the swatch in Home Depot as a Behr paint, but decided after a friend's recommendation to take the swatch to Sherwin Williams, who matched it perfectly. Sherwin Williams has a fun online gadget - upload a photo of your room, and paint it virtually. Great tool, especially useful to avoid a $40-a-gallon mistake. *gasp* Not that Behr was that much cheaper in price. Anyway, I found the tool after picking the color, but I have had fun playing with it. 

I used Behr Premium Plus interior paint for the living room and den ceilings (Cream Silk) and living room walls (Caraway - you know from my photos that it's a deep green, whatever hue this swatch depicts), and have been quite happy with the paint quality. I have two more gallons - Premium Plus Ultra, which is supposed to have primer already in it - ready to go for the hallway and staircase, in Chianti (a burgundy red, although this site's swatch looks more icky rust on my monitor). Behr is available at Home Depot, whose hours are more convenient for me. But Sherwin Williams was suggested as a "better" paint, so I tried it.

I do like the plastic jug Sherwin Williams uses. Duration interior with a satin finish worked great... after three and in some places four coats. Really. That was disappointing. I expected for the price it would cover better. Maybe it's because I was applying it over painted wallpaper. Maybe it was the deep color. Whatever, I was not particularly impressed with the performance. But I do like the color.

Once again, I wanted a picture rail installed. I had it placed about 9-10 inches below the ceiling to accommodate a wallpaper border someday.

 

As I did in the parlor, I changed out the plastic outlet covers for wood ones, then painted them to match the walls.

 

These walls are screaming for pictures or something. That's the final step, yet to come. I have a collection of framed family photos that might make a great wall mural... 

 

The rug comes from a past Rhode Island PBS Spring Auction (and buy the way, the 2010 auction is online beginning April 1, and televised April 26 - 30. And yes, the misspelling of buy/by is intentional).