15. Mini Makeover
Scrape, paint, and furnish a guest room
One of the strangest rooms in our house is a ground level room with low ceilings and a door to the exterior. The ceiling was textured, the walls painted brown, and the floor covered with loose, brown carpeting. All round it was not a pleasant space. Definitely not a place I would like to share with guests… until now!
The transformation
Here is the before and after of our mini make over for our guest room.
Strategizing a plan
Compared to the scale of other projects we have for the house, this one is small, but not a no-brainer. In the future, this room will be completely gutted and transformed. For now, and conceivably for the next 10 years, it could be something more useful. We were willing to invest some time and money to improve the room, but we had to be strategic about what we were willing to do.
Step one: assessing what stays and what goes
What goes:
The carpet
The textured ceiling
The textured walls (to a limited degree)
What stays:
The wood paneling
The casework
What gets improved:
Paint
The lights
Exterior door finish
The air distribution grilles
Step two: protect, move, scrape and patch
The very first thing I did was cover the existing wood paneling with plastic. We also move the casework off the walls. Then I attached the ceiling texture; it peeled off pretty easily with a combination of a spray bottle of water and a scraper. The wall texture, was a much more challenging story; I mudded the worst parts, but quickly resigned to leave the rest.
Step three: prime and paint
The transformation of the room with just paint was so gratifying. We used Benjamin Moore Super White (eggshell) paint for the walls, pure white for the ceiling (flat) and trim (satin).
Step four: remove the carpet
Removing the carpet was a little risky, since we did not know what to expect underneath. The results were mixed.
The concrete was generally in good shape, but there was a lot of adhesives and discoloration.
Step five: fight the floor
Using a scraper, rubbing alcohol, goo-gone, dish soap, nail polish remover and bleach, I tried and tried to remove the adhesive. It was not budging. We thought about getting a professional concrete finisher to grinds the finish, but at $3 per square foot it would have been $1500 to cosmetically improve the floor. We also thought about painting or adding an epoxy coating, but neither option seemed palatable considering this was a temporary use for the room and we did not want to make any changes now that would be difficult to undo in the future. Our solution: area rugs.
Step six: add lights
We used the same lights that we added to the guest house: Project Source Adjustable Color Temperature 13-in Black LED Flush Mount Lights from Lowes ($50/each). These lights are easy to install and look good.
The end result
We are pleased with how the mini make over turned out. Furnishing the room (primarily from IKEA) cost about $1500. All in the project cost was less than $2000. We are now happy to host guests in this room that was otherwise underutilized.
My next step is find other “easy” projects to improve our life we wait for the major renovations to begin.