Yeppers. It's red alright...

A couple of months ago, we elected to convert the small bedroom next to our bedroom into our new walk-in closet/storage room. It was a GREAT idea! We've never looked back. We were then able to dismantle our original closet which allowed a substantial increase of bedroom space to be used anyway that we wanted to!

This meant that we removed the former entrance from the smaller room into the hallway. It also meant that the wall that was once located between the smaller bedroom's closet and our bedroom needed to be removed almost entirely. Stan then placed a door there in part of the new wall for our access into the new closet. Anytime that people build walls CORRECTLY, there are several boards that are connected to baseboards which seperate these bases from the floor to the ceiling. They are placed approximately 1 feet away from the next board. When the "bones" have been put into the place, sheetrock etc. covers the bones from prying eyes. After Stan had built the new wall and had placed the door where it needed to be, there was a row of "bones" left at the top of the wall. I would guess that this space is approximately 8-10" from top to bottom and about 5 feet wide. He asked me if I wanted him to sheetrock that area or leave it open so that we could put a sheet of glass there. I chose the glass idea. It them becomes a transom that have been used for years in homes and businesses across the country. It allows light to filter in to both rooms from the other. But, there will not just be glass there. Instead, we will make another trip to Home Depot where we will choose a "sheet" of pliable "STAINED GLASS look alike". It is actually constructed from a very thick vinyl that has been created to look just like stained glass with gorgeous colors and designs. Once you purchase your "stained glass", you take it home and cut it with regular everyday scissors to fit it into whatever window you desire. A couple of years ago, we purchased some of this to cover our window in our main bathroom. Of course, we could have opted to hang curtains. Stan had gone into great detail to hang trim around the window and all cabinet doors, etc with beautiful wood with wooden rosettes in the corners. It seemed ridiculous to cover this around the window with some kind of cloth. So, after he had cut the vinyl, he sprayed water on the clean window, laid the vinyl on top of the wet window and then used a window squeegy to roll the vinyl flat on the window. That is where the vinyl has been continuously since that day. There are no corners trying to pull themselves off of the window. Unless you actually touch the vinyl do you discover that this is not real glass! People are always telling us how much they love the stained glass window in our bathroom! We took one of the scraps that was left over to cover the small window in our utility room door. This vinyl provides privacy with exceptional looks. Most of this can be purchased at Home Depot, etc for around $20.00 each.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Wrong! I really had very little to do with this demolition and construction work. My job came in later. Since our home was built in 1978, every single room in our house had wood paneling on each and every wall. We couldn't get away from it! LOL!!! So, we have gone out of our way to rid this from our vision one way or another. In our living room, former owners covered it up with some kind of material that has a really nice texture on it. It just requires paint now. We sheet-rocked other rooms in the house. Then, later on, when I discovered that I have a true love for Tuscan design (Italian), I learned of a wall treatment that is done using sheetrock mud. You apply it to the walls with mud applicators, metal spatulas, etc. When doing so, you do NOT want your walls to look perfect. You really want some flaws along the way which gives the appearance of a more lived-in appearance. It is time-consuming but very rewarding. I always love it when friends and family comment on how beautiful it is and ask me to teach them how to do it so that they can do the same thing in their own homes! After the mud has dried which it does completely naturally in a short amount of hours, you can choose to leave it as the natural grayish, whitish color or you can paint it any color that you want to. In our case, I always paint it. Since the texture is no longer smooth, I recommend that you use the thick paint rollers or paintbrushes so that you can get paint in any and all cracks and crevices.

Getting back to the bedroom. The construction work is now finished. So, on Monday afternoon, I started applying the mud to the new walls that had either been newly built or that had been "hiding" in the little bedroom's former closet. Once the mud was dry yesterday morning, paint was then slapped onto the walls. Given the fact that the bedroom walls were already painted in a color that is somewhere between a salmon and a terra cotta, it is difficult to come up with an absolute color match. (Should've kept the paint can's lid so that I would've had the information that I needed at the paint counter... Even if the paint mixer had forgotten to write the formula on the lid, the new machines would have a place where the dried paint on the lid would have been placed. Then, the computer would have given the mixing person the appropriate formula.)

So, I decided to come up with a different color for the new cove and the longest wall in the bedroom. Of course, it needed to be a color that would complement the existing wall color in the room. I chose the color, DRAMA. It is a very distinct RED. Further more, I LOVE it! It is definitely a color that I would never choose to paint an entire room with but for one highlight wall, it was great. It looks WONDERFUL with the original paint color. Our very tall and wide dark cherry headboard looks FANTASTIC with the wall color!

One bit of advice that I want to pass on to all of you who may be interesting in painting, know that red is one of the colors that requires at least 3 coats before your walls reach the shade and coverage that you want. Of course, the more coats of paint required, the more paint you will go through. For instance, the wall that I painted red is the longest wall in the bedroom. It would be approximately 20 feet long. By the time that I finished painting, there was literally not one drop of paint that remained in the gallon-sized can. It took the whole thing! Our bedroom is approximately 20' x 12'. If I had chosen to paint the whole room DRAMA, I probably would have needed to purchase 3 gallons. Normally, one gallon of paint of just about any other color is all that it takes to do our entire bedroom. The darker the paint, the more paint that will be needed to complete the job.

Either later this week or early next week, I will start the last of the mudwork in our home--our hallway that connects the bedrooms, and main bathroom to the rest of the house. I estimate that I will be mudding for at least 2 or 3 days. A color such as DRAMA will not be used on these walls. It will be something more in the line of being light t0 medium toned. After that, no one will be able to see any panelling in our house! YAY!!!

One more piece of advice for someone who wants to really show off the texture in their rooms. Use semi-gloss paint. It also makes the walls much easier to be cleaned. Eggshell and flat paints are used to "hide" walls' imperfections.

VLE-B