I'm continuing to blog about our living room changes. Some of what I am writing may appear to be out of order. We worked on parts of the bay window , the walls and the pocket door all at the same time, but I am choosing to blog about them separately. So in the photos, if you see some walls painted and some not, that's the reason why.
We did have wallpaper in the living room, as I've shown previously and needed to decide on a paint colour. We moved to PEI without any living room furniture, so after sitting on kitchen chairs for a few weeks to watch tv, we thought we had better get a couch. This is what we chose, trying to keep a bit of the old style to the house in some ways.
We also bought this chair, which is not vintage, but not modern either. The blue in the design matches the blue in the couch.
Now to pick a wall colour, we needed something to go with both and I chose grey. It is very popular in blogland, but I felt with the grey in the chair, it would look nice in this room.
The wallpaper was soaked with water from a spray bottle and scraped off with a wide plastic scraper. It came off quite easily in most places. Under the wallpaper was panel board. We were not sure just how the paint would look on there, but really didn't want to remove all the panelling and have to drywall. (Under the panelling is lathe and plaster.)
After the walls were stripped, there remained some wallpaper glue which I lightly sanded off to make the walls as smooth as possible. We then put a primer on all the walls.
It was suggested to us to use flat paint to hide any imperfections on the walls. I normally would not use flat paint, but since we did have this old panelling and slight imperfections from nails and walls that were not perfectly even, we did go with a good quality flat Benjamin Moore paint.
I also painted the ceiling with a standard ceiling paint. I felt we could leave the ceiling as it was, basically ceiling tiles with plaster over them, because it looked like it belonged with the house. (Or maybe I was too lazy to tear down the whole ceiling?)
We are pleased with the paint colour and it really did disguise any imperfections.
Now we need another chair and we need curtains just to hang on both sides of the side window and the bay window. We don't need to close them because we have the horizontal blinds all around, which I just love. Because of the design on the chair, I am a bit stuck as what to use for curtains. I think it will have to be something with a small design, or maybe striped. If you can offer any advise, please let me know!
Next post... the pocket door!
Love the colour! It looks fabulous. I've never been good with curtains - usually stick with solid colours because mixing patterns is HARD!
ReplyDeleteHave a great week!
Removing wallpaper has got to be one of the worst jobs in home remodeling. Looks like they papered over the paneling? I love the gray and your furniture choices. It looks so serene.
ReplyDeleteHubby called me over to his computer the other day and asked if I wanted to move to PEI. He was joking of course and probably thought I had never heard of PEI. He had come across a website with a fantastic house on an acreage overlooking the sea there. Under a million dollars but still almost a million out of our price range. lol
Looks great, Julie! I really like your furniture and paint choices. The fresh ceiling paint is really nice and bright, too. I'm not much help with the curtains, but white or a soft thin stripe popped into my mind. Hopefully someone will have a better idea.
ReplyDeleteNice improvement on your living room. What is PEI? Why is the small table not centered under the rose picture above it? Is something in the way?
ReplyDeletePEI is Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province on the east coast. The rose picture is centered between where I will have curtains that are on the sides of windows to the left and right. The small table can't be centered under because the couch is there. I have the same thing on the other side. I don't think those tables will stay, they are something I made and had no where else to put. I'd rather have a shorter table on each side of the couch.
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