The blue room - painting the mid-century master bedroom

Painting, painting and painting. It's all we ever really do around here...actually, I lie. We've had a few jobs completed, so I will get you all up to speed with our goings-on over the next few blog posts. But firstly, today is all about our blue master bedroom.

A few weeks ago we painted our bedroom a lovely shade of 1960s light blue. Again, we are trying to match the original colours of the house. Jason has been the chief colour matcher and he seems to be nailing the choice each time he goes to buy the paint. Go Jason!

Our bedroom was a mix of the original light blue colour and white - it seemed to be incomplete, like someone gave up when they were doing the job (and for a change it wasn't me!). We were planning on painting the room white however as with our laundry and kitchen we decided to embrace colour.

Blue suits the space and exudes a nice calming ambiance. We're loving it.

The following is a pictorial of our new lagoona teal coloured bedroom.

This is an after photograph of the painting. This shot is of our built-in dressing table.

Jason also re-painted the door which opens out to our backyard.

A corner of our bedroom with the blue coloured walls

In progress shot of Jason painting the walls

Painting white walls blue

 We still have a few things to do in this bedroom, such as changing the window coverings, and painting above the window frames (it just needs to be freshened up with white paint)...all in good time though.

Blue door hell:part 3

If you told me that time had stood still over the past five weekends, I would probably believe you...given we are still painting the front door...It's like we are stuck in some cruel time warp, where we are in some kind of blue door painting holding pattern!

stripped back again

'What?' you ask. Didn't we finish that door a fortnight ago? Hmm...it appears the word finished doesn't really mean finished. Even a blog post saying the door was finished was not enough! Clearly it's not really over when the fat lady sings. Jason's quest for perfection with this blue door knows no bounds. Good enough is not good enough.

Jason wanted to do one final touch up of the door, because there was still some dust particles which showed through the glossy finish. It didn't help that one of our friends pointed out the dust too - a casual throw-away line was the catalyst for one final coat of paint. (Thanks a lot Chris! Keep quiet next time. Ha!)

Unfortunately when Jason started painting the final touch up he chose to use a paint brush instead of his trusty roller. The paint went on too thickly and it then went quickly down hill from there...particularly when he tried to scrape it off. I'll spare you the details. Holy blue door hell, Batman!

We had to strip the door right back and start from scratch. Again. Deja vu. Ground hog day.

Happy campers we were not.

Blue door drying

I'd like to say that this weekend we 'finished' the door. But I won't. We'll just wait and see, okay?

And in happier news, we are painting the hallway this week and that seems to be going quite well. Thankfully.

Hallway painting

Blue door blues part 2: using oil paint

The new glossy blue door which we painted with oil-based enamel paint

You wouldn't think painting a blue door would give us so much grief... In the quest for the perfectly painted door we realised the water-based enamel paint was not going to cut it, in this instance. Damn shame really because it has so many great advantages...

The painting fubar with the water-based enamel...it dries too quickly. The roller just stripped off a section...

After trying to salvage the door and failing dismally, we decided to strip it right back and start all over again with old school oil enamel. The last straw was when Jason painted the last coat of water-based enamel with a roller. He went over one section which had dried too quickly and ended up stripping off a thin layer of paint...ruining the final finish.

And then it was on. Jason lost his cool quite spectacularly - it was like we were back to days of yore at the Sow's Ear. I could have charged admission for the show and made a fortune!

Fortunately, a can of paint stripper and a new tin of oil paint was enough to quell the tide of anger. It was quite easy to get the first blue paint layer off. It was like peeling the skin off from a sun burnt Smurf, if you require a literary device to imagine the scene...

Peeling off the water-based enamel. 

Stripping back the door revealed its colourful past -  beginning from blue, to mustard, to salmon, to white and back to blue again.

The paint stripper was able to remove most of the other layers. A quick sand and a dust down was preparation for the first coat of oil-based enamel.

The oil-based enamel has a lovelier, glossier, smoother finish

The colour is much richer than the water-based stuff, it also has a smoother and glossier finish. It was exactly the look Jason desired. The major downside (which is also an upside if you have to fix anything) is the lengthy drying time - it's quite a few hours, so don't expect to be shutting your door in a hurry if you use oil based paints.

Jason used a roller specifically for gloss paint to paint the door - it has a finer stipple to minimise the orange skin effect when using a paint roller. He painted one coat and after it dried completely he sanded it down before applying the second coat (this was completed over the space of two weekends, by the way).

Success! It looks a thousand times better. All is well in our small renovating world.

The next door we need to paint is the stable door or dutch door in the laundry...that should be an interesting experience. I'll keep you posted on how we go...

Blue door blues

As part of the restoration of our modernist home, we intend to retain some of the original colours (or as close as possible) used in the home when it was first built in 1963.

We're using an old photograph and also taking DNA colour scrapings from the wall...Ha! The old colours seem to work quite well and it makes painting a little more interesting when using colour as opposed to our usual vivid white.

Snorkel Sea blue front door

We found out the original colour of the front door was a deep blue after we scraped it back. Funnily enough it is not a colour we would have ever contemplated using in this house...but we like it and, more importantly, we think it works well with the exterior.

The front door used to be green on the inside and white on the outside

We love the new door colour - Dulux Snorkel Sea - which was as close to the original blue we could find from our local hardware. Jason used a water-based gloss enamel (he's used water-based enamel in a vivid white to paint around the window architraves to great effect).

The door, however, has not worked out as well as he would like and Jason is quite despairing of the finish. The paint strokes are too visible for his perfectionist streak (I don't really mind too much but he doesn't like it at all)! He's been fiddling with the front door for two weeks now and it is still not quite right.

He plans one more attempt to fix it before abandoning the whole project and using an oil-based enamel. We'll have to go back to square one and strip the whole thing back if we do...yikes!

Anyway, there are three more exterior doors we need to paint blue so we need to get this front door right before we proceed further.

On the weekend Jason painted the front facade white which it was originally from what we could gather...

One wall a weekend painting

The long weekend provided us the right impetus to clear out some of the overgrown garden and to continue painting the living/dining room. Three whole days in a row is such a decadent luxury in DIY land and we didn't want to waste it.

One wall a weekend painting. The living/dining area 

Jason got stuck into the painting. The goal is to paint one wall a weekend, so our living room is cleaner and fresher. Small bite size pieces is the method of attack. The most time consuming part is the taping up of the walls for the cutting-in as there are so many timber architraves and strips in this mid-century house.

The finished product...it's like we never painted. Ha!

Jason painting the black timber ceiling beams. Notice how he hasn't taped up. Go  steady hand Jason!

We also have lovely black timber ceiling beams which need to be repainted. Jason used a matte black chalk paint to freshen it up. It provides a crisp contrast to the Queensland maple timber ceiling. He only painted one of the beams and already it has given our living room a real lift.

The finished product...it's like we never painted. Ha!

Most of the changes we have been making to the house are very subtle. When people come to visit us, they don't actually notice if we've done anything new to the house. But that's okay. I kind of think that is the mark of a good restoration/renovation when people think it is as it should be. Hopefully the cumulative effect of all the changes will bring this house back to its former glory.

This one whole section of wall is now finito...as is that one strip of ceiling beam...

And the skip bin was a great investment for the long weekend. We cleared most of the vegetation which was covering our garden shed. It's just tidied that portion of the yard and we were able to give the rest of the garden a much needed prune. Hooray for long weekends!

Skip bin being delivered. It took us one morning to fill up!

The paint brushes are out...

We've picked up the paint brushes again...I am using the royal 'we', of course, as it is Jason who is the Master Painter around here.

Taping around the doors and ceiling, ready for some paint.

It is a gentle start to restore and freshen up this modernist home. When the vertical blinds in the lounge room  were removed a few weeks ago, it revealed a raw pine mullion between the two glass sliding doors... which Jason was compelled to paint.

Some shirtless painting...purely to indulge his dwindling fan base...

You see, the glass sliding doors are not original to the house. This mid-century beauty would have had slightly larger aluminium sliding doors. In the original plans of the house, Lidco glass sliding doors were specified. For one reason or another, the doors were changed...most probably because the original Lidco sliders would not have locked effectively or became hard to slide over the years.

They would have been similar to the sliding doors found in a Robin Spencer designed house I visited earlier this year. You can read about it here. In a perfect world we would like to restore the sliding doors back to what it would have been...all in good time though.

1960s glass sliding doors 

Regarding the painting, at least it is a start, albeit a very small start...We will progressively paint all the other walls in this room in vivid white acrylic which seems to give the dark plywood ceilings an instant lift.

Small start to repainting the modernist house

Chalk paint makeover of a milking stool

The good people from Annie Sloan sent me paint and wax* to sample as part of their launch of chalk paint into the Australian market. I had heard about the new paint...however I had only ever seen it used in that distressed antique-style finish...

And as regular readers would know, that's not the sort of finish I normally favour. I wanted to use the paint in a clean, mod-style and had the perfect piece of furniture to rejuvenate.

In 1993, as a young unemployed graduate, I committed crimes against furniture when I decoupaged a perfectly innocent milking stool. Yes, the horror!

DIY decoupaged stool.
Believe it or not, I was so proud of my efforts...clearly as I 've kept it intact since 1993!

But it was the 90s and I had a perm...Decoupaging seemed like a good DIY hobby while trekking between dead-end job interviews and the dole office...

This poor old milking stool is so handy - it's used as a ladder, spare chair, side table and play surface. I set about rectifying the sins of the past and sanded the stool back to its vintage goodness. It deserved another chance at life.

Think belt sander with a very coarse grit to remove the Victorian-era inspired decoupage and then hand-sanding the hard to reach areas around the legs.

The milking stool sanded right back 

I painted the milking stool in graphite chalk paint. I didn't want to paint it entirely in one colour and decided to try my hand at that paint-dipped look which is so fashionable.

J Crew ad with fluoro (neon) paint dipped stools 

All you need is good painter's tape and a ruler to get everything level and at the right height. I didn't primer the stool and just painted straight onto the wood. This particular stool needed three coats of chalk paint.

Going for that paint-dipped look with chalk paint

The Annie Sloan chalk paint dries to a matte finish, which you can then lightly sand with fine sandpaper.  After it is dusted clean, apply a couple of coats of clear wax to make the finish more durable - it has a lovely satin sheen. I applied the wax onto the unpainted legs too.

Chalk paint dipped stool.
It almost has that minimalist designer look 

black dipped stool

It turned out much better than I had expected...but I think anything was going to be an improvement. Ha!

I just hope I won't be recoiling in horror in 20 years time, wondering what possessed me to paint dip the milking stool...Anyway, I like it now, so that just will have to do.

*disclaimer I was given a tin of graphite paint and wax to sample by Annie Sloan

Bathroom: before and after

We are happy with how our bathroom looks now. If we had imagined that painting the wall tiles would've looked this good we would've done it at the very start of our sojourn at the Sow's Ear. 

Although we are not really advocates of temporary renovations, sometimes it's just necessary... particularly if you are 'umming and ahhing' about whether you intend to stay in a home forever or planning larger long-term renovations where rooms may need to be changed to accommodate a growing family.

Painting the bathroom tiles was a quick and cheap fix of our bathroom. The old beige tiles and grey grout did no favours to the out-of-square room. Every flaw was noticeable. The higgledy piggledy grouting and dated feature tiles stood out like the proverbial - the white tile paint disguises it so well.

We would totally recommend painting tiles as a temporary measure if you are unhappy with how your tiles look...but Jason and I agree that white is the only colour we would consider for such a task (I'm sure others have had equal success with colours though). 

The total cost of the tile painting was less than $150 for the paint. We used a one litre tin of tile primer and two tins of white tile paint. The process of painting the tiles was quite easy. Prepping the walls is probably the most important step to ensure a nice even finish.

Bear in mind that painted tiles will never really be as nice as a good professional tiling job. It won't have the same longevity...but I guess we will find out as we live with it. But considering how dubious we were of tile paint, it is worth a shot if you are despairing of your tile situation!

Just to refresh everyone's memory, here are some photographs of the Sow's Ear's bathroom from about 2009 when we first moved in.

Before:

Our old bathroom was quite serviceable but just needed a freshen up until we decide what to do with a full bathroom renovation...

Beige tile, grey grout, cream painted wall, ceiling and windows. 

timber vanity, timber mirror and towel rails

Country style bathroom with beige and green decorative feature tile

After:
This mini bathroom makeover has really been a work in progress for the past few weeks but with the huge advantage of allowing us to still access the bathroom. It was never out of action for too long...which is important in a one bathroom family house.

white painted tile, white walls, windows and ceiling.
We also removed the bars across the windows which we think  were installed to stop small children from falling through the opening!

We started with painting the door white, it was originally cream. A traditional chrome hook on the door provides extra hanging space.

After the fiasco of the dodgy chrome towel rails that we purchased earlier, I went out and bought a towel rail ladder. We picked it up at the Bathroomwarehouse in Newstead who provided particularly nice service, hence the shout out. Nice is always good.

A towel ladder gives us more towel hanging space. This is the round profile Heirloom brand.
I also bought a couple of new dark grey towels that were on sale.

We still have some of the el cheapo fittings like the towel ring and toilet holder...we're hanging on to them until  they fall apart. Hopefully they won't, but we're not worried because we know where we can get new ones without too much fuss.

Painted white vanity.
An old Dickies towel from the 70s and makes a cool, yet substantial hand towel

Painting the vanity and changing the handles have made it disappear completely. It never really deserved to be a feature in the bathroom. We like vanities like this to just blend quietly into the background. We also painted the heavy timber mirror frame so that it blends right back into the walls.

I'm loving these new bathroom runners that are around.
It's really soft and will be nice over the winter months...before it  becomes a hot mouldy mess. Ha!
We've left the floor tile as they were.

Jason built new window architraves to match the rest of the Sow's Ear.
He's the details man. The rubber ducks have a nice spot in which to reside.

We still have a few small things left to do on the bathroom, but that's pretty much it for now. Yippee!  You can read all our bathroom posts here if you're not up-to-date with what we have been doing. 

Anyone out there tempted to paint over some ugly tile? Tell me because I know your pain.

Of dodgy backs and dodgy towel rails

For the past few days my perspective on all things has been mostly horizontal. I've injured my back with just a mere twist and a turn. And I have been lying prone on my bed bemoaning my misfortunes to all unfortunate to be in my presence. Sadly for my family, I'm not a stoic patient... but painkillers are my new best friends.

My cocktail of prescription medicine.

(If it were Jason, he'd have kept calm and carried on while renovating the Sow's Ear...unless he had man-flu)

With me being completely out of action this weekend (not that it really matters on the renovating front), Jason kindly finished the sanding of the first coat of tile paint in the bathroom and applied the final coat of white tile paint (and washed, cooked and performed the domestic minuets to keep the Sow's Ear running).

The bathroom looks so fantastic and has exceeded all our expectations. I won't show you the final photos now, because I still need to give the bathroom floors a good scrub-a-dub-dub and I'd like to get the final bits and bobs to pretty up the room.

Also while Jason was finishing off the sanding he accidentally bumped the new towel rails. You know the towel rails which we weren't entirely happy with...read here.

Well, it seems we were right to be dubious of them because one broke away from the wall and the other towel rail twisted out of  its backing plate when Son #2 hung his towel on Friday. Dodgy! Flimsy as paper were those chrome towel rails. We didn't even get a month out of them - a waste of good time and good money.

Where the towel rails used to hang before it broke.
On a happier note, the tile painting looks fab!

Note well: do not compromise on your fixtures and fittings. Step away from the blister pack. You do get what you pay for with things like bathroom fittings, which really ought to withstand everyday use. We should've known better...

I'll be ordering some new sturdier towel rails this week. 

Tile painting kind of weekend

Painting the bathroom tiles has been the big ticket job of the weekend.

I delegated the rest of the bathroom painting to Jason. He's not as slap dash as me and is fairly meticulous with his brush strokes. The entire bathroom has now been scrubbed; primed; holes and missing grout 'sikaflexed'; and the first coat of tile paint applied.

It looks bloody fantastic. If we had known that the tile painting was going to be this effective we would've done it a lot sooner. It is just unbelievable what a difference it has made so far and we still haven't done the second coat.

Here are some photos of the work in progress from our productive weekend.

The old tiles being painted with primer. Jason in designer painting shorts. The crappiness of the toilet  cistern is heightened by its white surrounds

The painted tiles have a glossy sheen

And all-white bathroom 

We are so glad we took the plunge to paint the tiles. Hopefully we can have it all finished by next weekend. 

First coat of white tile paint...

Okay, the first coat of tile paint is on a section of the bathroom walls.

And it's not bad. The tile paint is oil based, so it is a stickier consistency than the water based primer. I stirred the paint really well and then proceeded to brush it on to the primed walls.

Sadly, my painting technique leaves a lot to be desired. I don't have Jason's quasi Master Painter skills which he has acquired over the past three years. Ha! Should've helped him more...

I was probably a bit heavy handed with the amount of paint used, as drips were developing thick and fast. Luckily I spotted most of the drips as I was moving along the wall - they were easily brushed out.

The finish is glossy and tacky to start off with. After about two hours the paint is touch dry and has a very glossy finish. It needs to dry for at least six hours before you can apply the second coat.

Newly painted bathroom tiles. It's not bad and I'm pleased with the results so far.

It also requires a light sand before the second coat goes on; that job will be on the cards tomorrow morning.

I think we are on a winner with this tile paint. We'll have to do the rest of the walls which will be tedious, but at least the results are looking very promising.

First coat of white tile paint. The border tile is goneski!

The bathroom appears to be seamless, with the standard white tile paint going nicely with the new vivid white walls. The magic of paint.

P.S Someone on my Instagram feed asked whether the paint could be used on floor tiles. The answer is no as the product information says it's not recommended for floor tiles or benchtops.

Priming the bathroom tiles

I started painting the bathroom tiles today while the weather was dry and sunny. The plan is just to do one corner of the bathroom wall just to see whether it looks okay.

The tile primer is cream, so the bathroom still looks a bit fugly. Son #1 was completely appalled when he saw my efforts this afternoon. There's always a critic around here (and for a change it's not me!).

Tile primer on old ceramic tiles in the bathroom

I made sure the old ceramic tiles were cleaned, using some sugar soap we already had and a soft green scourer to remove the bits of random mould and grease. You can buy special tile cleaner which is the same brand as the tile paint but I didn't. Let's hope that wasn't my first fatal mistake...

Once the wall was cleaned and dried, I brushed on one coat of primer which is quite matte. It covers well and you can barely see the tile border. It's touch dry in two hours and the top coat can be applied after four hours.

primer coverage - you can barely see the pattern of the feature tile.

So far, so good. The primer finish seems okay and if the weather is good tomorrow, I'll get started on the first of two top coats...or maybe I might be inspired and do it tonight after watching The Block....Ha!