Ventana

Will and I tackled the TV room this summer (yes it was *started* in the summertime, but it was finished in the first few days of autumn). We were tired of the green paint, crackled and dull. We were tired of the chipped baseboards and windows. We were tired of the furniture.

I guess that the furniture is what started it. We took wedding money and gift cards and bought a new sofa. It was supposed to arrive last week (still hasn't come into the warehouse) and we thought: it would be a good idea to paint the room *before* the new sofa arrives.

Okay, okay, I thought that it would be a good idea and Will, the dear hear that he is, went along with me. After all, the room is only 10 x 12 feet. A space small enough that it would be very easy and quick!

Well, Will and I have yet again learned a valuable lesson: this house is never easy or quick.

Nearly two weeks later, we have a finished room (though we still have to put it back together... someone has far too many books to sort out first).

You remember this photo:


You can see the dullness of the green when we were first started thinking of painting. But then I decided that if we have curtains, though I dislike them, I am not going to change them anytime soon (next summer's project, maybe), so maybe we ought to try to match the curtains.

In the meantime, we would prepare the room. So, we started scraping. And what did we discover?

The green paint was painted on TOP of wallpaper. So, we had to scrape the entire room to remove the green painted wallpaper.


Once we scraped it all off, the wallpaper left a fuzzy mess on the walls. Thank goodness for modern chemicals. Our hardware store (yes, they know are names when we go in and chuckle at us when we relay to them what we are after now as we redo the house slowly) had this stuff: you spray on, you wait 20 minutes, you scrape off the residue. Man, did it work! We were amazed.

In the meantime, we decided no green for the room but a nice deep brown.

After we removed the wall paper residue, we discovered that the room had been brown in a previous life:


We decided that the deep brown (see the other two brown blocks of paint?) was not the right color at all. It made the room seem even smaller. So, we went with a lighter brown: Ventana.

We prepared and primed the ceiling and walls:

It took two coats of primer!! And then we painted the walls (another two coats!!), trim, shelves, and windows. Will was a pro at the edging:
The result is what I call a chocolate milk or the color of my coffee, which has loads of cream in in it. Will calls it a milky tea. Kelly called it taupe. Whatever the color, it is not beige. We love it. And once we have all the million books back in, the new sofa, and the curtains back up, it will be finished and one more room in this house will be done.