The Breakfast Nook

We had very few painting projects when we moved into our new house, but one of the places we decided to "add some color" was the breakfast nook. I picked a color on a whim and told Michael that if we were going to paint the breakfast nook I would choose to paint the bottom half of our wall red (which was, when we moved in, wood paneling that was painted a cream color... the same color as our wall).

We taped with blue painters tape and painted three coats of red. At that point, I decided to peel off the painters tape and have a look, but when I did that a huge strip of red paint peeled off. DISAPPOINTING. The wood paneling underneath the sellers cream colored paint was totally smooth - it hadn't been prepped for painting at all as far as we could tell!

We discussed everything from scraping it down to the wood to replacing the wood paneling with sheet rock, but ultimately sanded and scraped the red paint down to the wood paneling.

Below is a picture you may have already seen of mom helping us take that paint off.

This is Michael one Saturday morning sleeping on his stool while I scraped paint.

This is me below (on the same morning) working very hard.

We were going to sand the scraped wood paneling by hand with sand paper, but Michael asked if he could use the electric sander because "it won't make that much of a mess." Here is the footprint on our tile floor after the sander. 'Nuf said.

The scraped, sanded and wiped-down paneling.

Primed!

After my family came to visit and mom explained to Ninny that one of the reasons we were scraping the wall was to get rid of "the ugly red paint the seller had in here" I changed my mind about the red I picked. I think mom felt bad at the time, but she was right, it wasn't the right color. Still determined to do a "fun" color I picked a green. As soon as it was done (see below) I knew I didn't like it. Michael told me to "Wait a few weeks" and see if it grew on me. But EW! It didn't.

Ultimately I picked a shade of khaki that was just a shade or two darker than the color of our walls. Not too dark, not too light, just a little bit of contrast. Below, coat #1.

After mom and I changed the top of the wood panel trim to the color of our baseboards I knew it was finally right. Finished room below.

Finally FABULOUS!