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Painting and Planking the Hall Half Bath–Part II

October 28, 2013

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I feel like we have left you with a few loose ends when talking about the hall half bath.  First, we left you with a photo of the paneling installed, but unfinished. And then Friday, we spilled the beans that while painting the paneling, we also repainted the walls.  Anyway, without further ado, here’s how those loose ends look tied up:

While I painstakingly primed and painted on two coats of Benjamin Moore’s Simply White in a semi-gloss finish–more on that in a sec–the country blue of the walls was not going away like I thought it would once the natural cedar started disappearing.  This is when I would normally start panicking and thinking of a way to convince/break it to Chris that we needed to repaint the walls.  But! On the contrary, Chris had actually mentioned once we installed the new fixture and the room was so much brighter that he “wasn’t so sure about the paint.” I tried to convince him (ha! the irony!) that once we had a fresh coat of white paint on the bottom half of the room, that baby blue (actually Ben Moore’s Wales Gray) would neutralize once again. So, instead of panicking while coming to this conclusion, I just started swallowing my pride and before the end of the night Thursday we had the ceiling painted white (again) and the walls painted the ever popular, for good reason, Hale Navy. 

 

Now, back to painting those cedar planks and the cabinetry, which you may notice is also a clean white now–woot.  Before even diving into to priming and painting, I needed to fill all the nail holes and quite a lot of knots with wood filler and then sand those babies down smooth.
I learned on our Instagram there are horror stories about painting over wood paneling without priming first, even if your paint has a primer in it and I wasn’t going to be another one of those stories.  So, I primed first using Zinsser’s Bull’s Eye Zero (three cheers for no-VOC!) primer.  After one coat, the coverage was good and I didn’t see any bleeding so I moved on. But before I make this sound like a quick process, my eyes widened every time I looked at a clock.  Even after Chris removed the top half of the toilet to make it easier for me to paint that wall (#lifesaver), it took hours.  I first cut in each line and edge with a brush–lots and lots of lines–and then rolled on all the flat surfaces.
Before I even got to the actual paint part, which would really be just repeating the process two more times, I took a note to tell you if you are going to do this project–absolutely paint the planks before installation. Spraying would be even faster!  Don’t let yourself lose 6-7 hours of your life on a process that could take 2. While I would undoubtedly do the process differently, the results we’re thrilled with.

The bathroom looks so clean and fresh and up-to-date.  Unfortunately, our accessories (mirror, towel holder, toilet paper holder, cabinet hardware, decor, etc) didn’t arrive before the party on Saturday night–so it was pretty bare, but still functional.  And art on the walls or not, we were a lot more proud of the way this looked than where we started.  Or maybe you forgot:

So, so close to calling this room done for now.  Hopefully all of our accessories will arrive this week!
Read part one about how we installed the paneling right here.

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What do you think?

  1. However, tape backs are not normally encrypted making it easy
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  2. What a transformation!! The before–YIKES!

  3. Tracey says:

    We used Wales Gray in our master bath and Hale Navy in our son’s bathroom! Wales Grey is definitely more blue than grey and changes a lot with the light the room gets!

  4. Wow, it looks amazing! So crisp and modern. Can’t wait to see it with the accessories—love your style!

  5. Heather says:

    I’m curious about the process if you would have painted the planks before installing. You’d still have nail holes to fill and sand. And in my experience, even with a few coats of paint, you can still see those marks where you sanded. If the planks were already painted, wouldn’t you have a lot of splotches all over the place if you had to touch up that way?

  6. It looks so good! What an absolutely amazing transformation! I LOVE this!

  7. Ah, navy and white – a classic! And good call on removing the cabinet doors – hope those are staying off!

  8. Cassie A. says:

    This look great! I love the white/dark contrast. I think changing the wall color was a good choice. Very fresh looking. I can’t wait to see it all put together with the accessories.

  9. Looks amazing! I am always in awe of your projects. What did you do to prep the cabinets for painting?
    Good work and congratulations!

    • You can see in the photo in the post, the wall behind the sink and the cabinet had a white, laminate surround on it. We removed it and the paneling covered the wall, so no big there. But for the cabinet, we just sanded down any residue and then primed and painted with the same stuff we used for the cedar planks.

  10. Love it!! How did you paint the cabinetry?

    • You can see in the photo in the post, the wall behind the sink and the cabinet had a white, laminate surround on it. We removed it and the paneling covered the wall, so no big there. But for the cabinet, we just sanded down any residue and then primed and painted with the same stuff we used for the cedar planks.

  11. Sam F says:

    Just love your style and I love this so much!

  12. Debby says:

    It looks amazing, and much more your style

  13. Kimberly says:

    It looks amazing! You guys rock! =)

  14. Emily says:

    It looks so beautiful! Have you considered ripping the vanity top off, replacing it was a flat surface–maybe a slab of left over granite?…and topping it with a vessel sink? It could be a lot cheaper than replacing the entire vanity, and it would look beautiful, I think! Just a thought. Love the colors!

    • We have no plans to change the vanity itself for now, and the white laminate top is really not offensive either. Although I could see us maybe changing the countertop down the road and definitely the sink and faucet.

  15. Kara says:

    What a difference! It looks gorgeous!

    (Btw, I think you mean “further ado” … as in “without further fuss or trouble” not “without further goodbyes”)

  16. beautiful! you can tell a lot of work went into this…it paid off!

  17. Sam says:

    Looks gorgeous! Have you thought about painting the ceiling the same colour as the walls at all? With it being a smaller sized room and having the white panelling, it might really lift the ceiling. There’s a good chance it could end up looking like a cave as well though but looking at that picture and the size of the window, I think it could work. Can’t wait to see it accessorised either way :)

    • When we painted it the previous color, we painted the ceiling for the exact reason you pointed out. But with this much darker color, we painted it back white due to the cave effect. Thanks for having our back, Sam. Seems like we’re thinking on the same wave lengths. ;)

    • Sam says:

      I thought I’d seen you mention painting the ceiling at some point but I swear my brain has just melted this week. I do have a serious crush on that colour though!

  18. My eyes thank you! Ah the power of paint :)

  19. Great call on changing the paint color! It looks absolutely amazing!

  20. Elaine says:

    looks great! So fresh and clean :)

  21. So funny, this is almost exactly how we just finished our bedroom, same paint color and everything! The only difference is we did vertical beadboard instead of the horizontal cedar planks, and ours has a chair rail where the planks end. Its such a delicious color and style combo, isn’t it? It just classied up our room in a day!

  22. It always surprises me what a difference paint can do!! I love this bath!

  23. Brandilyn says:

    When we bought our store, it was painted canary yellow and coral. With purple ceilings….and a barn red accent wall. Anyways, most of the store was covered in slatwall, and I had to paint all of it white, which of course required several coats. Needless to say, I feel your pain here. Getting in all those nooks and crannies…It. Takes. Forever.

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