Lodi’s room, Final Paint Choices, the Floors and the Door!

Finishing Lodi’s room! There were quite a few steps to finally getting here: First we scored the jackpot of the perfect door for this space. Then we put a new exterior door (and new doggie door) in the workshop and removed the old exterior door here and replaced it with a window. Finally we built the new wall, hung the “new” door, trimmed everything out and officially, made this a REAL room. Moving on now to finishing it all up with paint!

Legally this could never count as a bedroom (its only about 6×7) a twin bed would totally fit in here but, of course, that’s not why we made this a room.

We don’t need more places to sleep people!

What we needed (and Lodi totally deserved) was a space for him!

In any home this would make a small but totally workable office, craft or storage room and that’s what we made this for. It will be our storage room for valuables (and firearms) mostly it will be Lodi’s “office” though his own “workshop” would be a better way of describing what he’ll use it for.

My Lodi is a veteran who served nearly ten years and three tours.

His identity will always be reflected at least somewhat as a US Army soldier and finding balance with that in Lodi’s room without it feeling like a Bald Eagle throwing up the star spangled banner when you walk in was pretty important to me.

Or (maybe worse) just covering the walls in camouflaged wall paper…

I was absolutely determined though to remain a totally neutral party…

Its a small room.

Its Lodi’s room.

I could give up a LITTLE control – right!?

We went looking at paint colors together and he grabbed one paint chip and said it was what he wanted.

I just stared at him.

And then I proceeded to grab a dozen paint chips in various shades around his initial gut instinct, plus several chips in maybe what the wood colors would be like and told him we weren’t buying paint yet lol.

(I had over a dozen paint chips lined up above a window in the entryway for three months before I had it narrowed down to one…)

One thing I know for sure is that our “gut instinct” of what we want is almost never the paint chip we pick out first because no one’s house has Home Depot store lighting.

To get the color we want we have to bring them home!

When Lodi initially wanted a brown color all I said was, “As long as it doesn’t remind us of any kind of animal poop then I’m on board.” Seriously, I don’t care how pretty a brown it is, it takes NO STRETCH of the imagination to take it right into the dog poop arena.

(Obviously I take that pretty seriously as I don’t have a single paint color in this home (besides the buttery yellow in the living room) that isn’t gray, blue, purple, black, white or somewhere in between.)

I was proved right as the paint chip he initially chose he was not a fan of after we compared them all in his room.

He narrowed it down to two and I’m happy with his choice personally. It reminds us both of his desert Army fatigues – but the color has more depth then just that initial glance. It also has gray and green undertones that reminds me of a fancy mustard without going overboard.

And its not a far stretch from the buttery hallway color which is great because they’re compared side by side above his door.

In short: Its perfect for Lodi’s room!

Appalachia by True Value. We had Ace mix it up for us in their Royal brand paint.

(Unfortunately its a very hard color to photograph in such a small, dark space. I took the photos at the height of the day for as much natural light as possible. If I wasn’t careful the color looked really green or totally pumpkin depending on the angle…)

After we painted Lodi’s room out I taped off the trim and painted his floor in the same color that was already there (Sooty Lashes by Valspar) and will be putting several coats of a semi gloss polyacrylic over it to protect it.

I start from the top and work my way down in a room and because I knew we needed to repaint these floors anyway I had no problem totally destroying them lol I’m not protecting floors I’m going to repaint anyway!

Lodi is more fond of the “raw” wood look than I am. (He grew up in North Dakota and never got the pleasure of being surrounded by yellow knotty log cabin pine his entire life.)

I was cool with him not staining his future workbench, shelves, door and trim dark but I was really on the fence with just using a clear coat on everything as its all different kinds of wood.

I played around with the idea of putting a stain on the door to tone it down a bit but the more I thought about it the more I realized that really, even after all the work of getting that door sanded down to raw wood, no one is ever going to see it as the door is probably going to be open (and thus hidden from sight) whenever anyone is in here.

(Kind of a shame really…)

And no one is EVER going to shut the door, step back into the corner of this small room and say, “Oh my GAWD I can’t believe how the door and the workbench CLASH! I thought better of you as a designer Tarah!!!!”

The workbench will be the star of this room completely – the total focal point – and that was what was most important to get exactly how Lodi wanted.

So, a couple of coats of a semi-gloss poly acrylic is all I did on the door, the pine trim around it and all I’ll be doing to his work bench and shelves as well.

To be fair, the door is really red like I thought it would be but, regardless, I think its lovely.

Coming up in the next post will be how we made the custom workbench and new shelves. (Sorry no sneak peek yet.)

I still had all of the floors taped off because I was waiting to get his workbench and shelves installed first so I could seal them all at the same time.

Initially Lodi had painted his peg board black but the more he thought about it the more he liked the idea of it being a chrome. I picked up a couple of cans of Chrome spray paint and he painted them out in the driveway one weekend when we were in the middle of all of this.

(I think it was good choice!)

You can see how I also had already painted out the hall side of the door in gloss black which I’m totally in love with!

Just a few more steps to final completion.