Unisex Guest Bedroom – Picking out a Grown up Paint Color

Teaming up with Chas in our DIY blog hop this month with projects for bedrooms! (Make sure and check out all of our bedroom projects following this post and feel free to join in!) Redesigning my guest bedroom in a more unisex design aesthetic. I was so totally in love with my guest bedroom when I redid it after throwing my ex out three years ago. (It was the beginning of the reclaiming of all of my spaces after my divorce.) It looked like me when I was a tom boy, country girl because that’s exactly how I designed it to be! One room that said ME and absolutely NO ONE else.

The entire room was made up of all of my childhood keepsakes and loves. Since then though (and yes its taken me all of three years to do it!) I have reclaimed and brought myself into every room of the rest of the house.

So, this guest bedroom no longer needed to be what it was. It definitely needed to be much more unisex and it no longer needed to be my library because I realized there was no reason the whole house shouldn’t be a library.

I LOVE books, they belonged everywhere!

With that realization I had already pulled most of the books out to use elsewhere and this poor room ended up looking like a tornado had hit it. All of my little keepsakes and loves from childhood didn’t belong out here either, they belonged in the spaces I lived in every day!

I knew the first place to start in making this room more unisex was paint.

I absolutely had to cover up that horrible pastel green/aqua that I never liked anyway. (Yes I picked it out and NO it was never right – I can admit when I’m wrong, it happens all the time. But it sure photographs well… weird.)

One thing I love about this home is that there is so much architecture in the rooms that I have a ton of bright balance to choose darker colors for the sheet rock. (Especially out here in what once was the screened in porch. This room has an entire wall of white 1915 wood siding.)

AND MY FAVORITE COLOR IS GRAY 🙂

What my master bedroom and my entryway taught me is that I can get away with dark and moody. My master is the same color as is on the floors out here and is more of a dark gray than a dark blue. (Its called Sooty lashes by Valspar – Very unisex in my opinion.)

My Entryway/Dining room is more of a dark green than a dark gray. (Its called Fait Accompli by Valspar)

I think they’re both rich and interesting.

I still had my pile of paint swatches from my entryway remodel. This time I decided to go for more of a dark blue than dark gray, something that would pop out all of the white architecture.

The color is called Flannel Gray by Valspar.

Lodi and I emptied the room and cleaned it from top to bottom. Then I repainted the floors in Sooty Lashes one night and then the next night covered them in a heavy coat of semi gloss polycrylic.

I then protected the floors with tape and plastic and, a couple days later, Lodi and I tackled painting out the trim, ceilings and wall of siding in a semi gloss white.

The painting of the white was the biggest and most annoying of the jobs out here between the bead board ceilings and the old siding most of it had to be done by hand. I did what I could with a VERY heavy nap roller and that gave us a leg up with our brushes.

Picking out a Unisex Paint Color

(I’m fully aware I hit the light fixture accidentally with the roller knocking it off its screws and its just hanging out not hurting anything in that picture…)

Then, yet another night after work later, I finally moved on to the new paint color for the walls and I am reminded once again why I love Ace Hardware’s Royal brand. I did one coat with the roller and two coats with brushes along the edges.

THAT’S IT. IT COVERED BEAUTIFULLY.

I WON’T EVER WASTE MY TIME ON ANOTHER BRAND OF PAINT AGAIN.

As far as the color goes it turned out to be more gray than I expected (and less blue) but I’m still happy with it. Its also a lighter tone than the floors (kind of hard to tell that in the pics though…) and I think they really compliment each other.

(I painted out the inside of the closet too because I’m a glutton for punishment.)

To me this room grew up by DECADES. It even feels kind of impressive now – the ceilings really soar and I think the paint is masculine beside the femininity of the stained glass window.

I felt like I hit a home run!

Next up, it was time to tackle the headache that is a furniture layout.

(If you’re wondering about that pretty door here is the post about how I stripped it and refinished it.)

Check out my DIY Blog Hop Co-Founder’s post this month: Chas from Chas’ Crazy Creation’s Superhero Comic Side Table Makeover

THIS WEEK’S DIY BLOG HOP: BEDROOM PROJECTS!

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