I know what you’re thinking. It’s only paint. You’re right! It is only paint, so why did it give me such a headache?!
The walk-in closet has already seen two iterations of paint in its pretty short life. Let’s talk about what went wrong and see if I finally made the right choice in the end!
Closet Renovation Recap:
First color: Valspar Gravity
First, let’s talk about why I chose this color. It was a pretty easy decision for me. It’s what I used for the rest of my living spaces downstairs and the upstairs hallway. We really like the color, and I wasn’t prepared to look into anything else.
Honestly, I was pretty tired from the drywall process and just wanted an easy decision. This was mistake #1.
Well, turns out that this color looks completely different in a room with no windows. It’s still a pretty color, don’t get me wrong. But it made the room very dark, and for a closet, that’s probably not the best direction!
To be honest, it took me about a year to recognize this. I had zero intention of repainting the room, so I probably just pushed this thought from my mind. But, as time went on, it became more and more obvious that a change was necessary.
(This is actually one of the only photos I have of the closet when it’s grey. I was still figuring out an organization system that worked, but I think it says something that I don’t have a ton of photos!)
You’re probably wondering what mistake #2 was. This was a big one and if you take one thing away from this post, it’s this:
I didn’t prime the drywall before painting.
Do. Not Do. This!
The paint I used was a primer and paint in one, so DIY novice me thought this was fine. It wasn’t. The drywall literally just sucked up all the paint and it required three coats, and even that ended up being pretty patchy.
I did, however, find a solution that did help to mask both this issue, as well as some of the mudding issues:
I decided to DIY a herringbone pattern on the sloped ceiling.
This cost me less than $5 and only took about an hour of work. And, I did really like it!
(Again, I don’t have a lot of photos of this stage, but hopefully, you get the gist!)
All I needed for this was a small amount of white paint, a foam paintbrush (mine was 4 inches), and some painters or masking tape.
To start, I used the tape as a guide and created vertical dividers. These weren’t perfect lines or anything, but it acted as a guide so I didn’t go too crooked as I was dabbing the paint.
Then, I just dipped my paintbrush in lightly and started dabbing down in a straight-ish line. I wanted this to be more organic, so I spaced them out relatively evenly, but I wasn’t measuring. After that, I would go down to the line next to it and just continue on.
Painting the sloped ceiling.
Another decision I had to make was what to do with the small portion of the ceiling that was flat. Since I knew I was painting the sloped ceiling, I thought it’d look really strange if only the couple feet of flat ceiling was white. So, I decided to also paint this, and I think it was the right decision.
Second Color: Behr Polar Bear
Like I mentioned, it took me almost a year to make this decision. Ten months to be exact.
It was right around the time that I was finally getting around to decorating, and I just came to the realization that I was trying to make the grey work when it just wasn’t. I wanted something brighter. I also had already decided to fix some other details (more on that soon!), so I figured, why the heck not?! “If you give a mouse a cookie…”
This time around, I primed.
And oh, what a difference it made. The paint still needed two coats after I primed, so it was still technically three coats worth of painting, but the finish is so much better.
Honestly, the hardest part here was taking everything back out. I decided to break up the room into two sections: front and back.
I decided to tackle the front section first. This is a smaller space, but I knew that the tight corners would frustrate me so I wanted to get it out of the way! I blocked off the back section with this drop cloth really to prevent any paint splatter from getting on all my clothes that I still had hanging back there. I also moved my Pax system off the wall to give me some space to get behind it.
Once I finished the front section, I moved the Pax system back and began to move everything that I had in the back section into our guest room. Yes, it was a complete disaster.
(Can you spot the cute kitty? 😻)
But, guys. It was so much brighter! I was thrilled with how this turned out and I’m glad I took the extra week of work to make it right.
Have you ever had to make a change like this? Let me know if in the comments how it turned out!
