New Studio/Study

No, I have not renovated my flat, I’ve just repainted the study walls and given it a bit of pizazz. I was originally thinking that the colours would be somewhat grey with a slight blue tint. The end result is a much bluer colour than I originally imagined, we were using the colour of a wall from a jpeg being viewed on an iphone, so I think that’s where we went wrong there. But in the end I’m very happy with how the colours have turned out. The first picture shows the colours (low sheen all using Dulux paint) we used (feature wall is Happy Days, and the other three walls are Bay’s Water), the patchiness is because the paint is still drying. The second picture is the bucket that I used for cleaning the brushes after the brushes had been cleaned, quite blue right (I might make my own film with some CG backgrounds and characters).

Water is blue

The finished result with the fluorescent lighting, it’s a bit warm and not that great in the shot, the walls look a lot better in natural lighting (especially the one with the black bike), I will update this post (or add a new one more likely) with a picture taken in natural light when I get a picture to put on the feature wall (probably the cow). The doors, windows, and skirting we painted with high gloss white paint and the contrast works really well. I’m not going to go into all the detail of what we did because we just followed guides from the internets.

The feature-less wall

In terms of what we learnt and will do better next time (yeah, there will probably be a next time :D), they are:

• Use a sample colour first! (although we didn’t with the feature wall and might not have finished the job if we didn’t have 4L of the darker blue already), it only costs about $10 bux for 250ml of the sample and you can get a good idea whether you like it or not.
• Tear the painters tape off straight away, we didn’t and it did end up tearing some paint off (although we did touch it up later to good effect).
• Vacuum after sanding, just means there will not be dust all over the skirting when it comes time to paint those parts.
• An extension for the roller(s) is definitely worth it, saves having to use a ladder.
• Different sized brushes are very useful.
• Let the paint set for at least a few days more than what it says on the can before putting stuff in contact with it.
• Gloves are a good idea.
• Take before shots so that you can compare the job properly afterwards!

The plain wall

Next in line, the living room and my bedroom, I’m not sure when we’ll do them, but we’ve still got plenty of paint so we’ll see, I’m not sure how much time I have before the end of the year to do it, so it may have to wait until sometime in the new year before I can do the next room. I’m still tossing up whether to do the living room with a feature wall or all four the same colour.