Painting The Craft Cottage

This painting portion of The Craft Cottage renovation is sponsored by HomeRight and Sherwin Williams. All opinions are my own.

Hi everyone and welcome back to the second installment of Renovating The Craft Cottage!  You may remember from my introductory post that I’m smack dab in the middle of fixing up a 1937 in-law quarters in my backyard to function as a studio and workspace for my blog. It’s got a little kitchenette area, a full bathroom, and plenty of cabinets for my craft supplies. It’s about 200 sq. feet larger than the area I’m working in now so I can’t wait to get in there!

Jumping the Gun

Before I could even begin dreaming about crafting in my new space, it was essential to get a fresh coat of white paint on everything, including the slatted ceiling. What better time to paint a room than when it’s completely empty, right?! I truly loved the look of the dark natural wood ceiling but I really wanted the room to look bright and fresh, not just for aesthetic purposes, but to also help with photograph and video taking. With all the separate slats, painting that ceiling was not going to be fun…thank goodness HomeRight came to my rescue!

The Right Tools

We used the HomeRight Power-Flo Pro 2800 to get two coats of paint on the walls of The Craft Cottage over the course of a weekend. This was our first time working with a paint sprayer so the initial learning curve was a bit steep for us but both my husband and I agree that the time sacrificed for set-up is well worth the time saved in application. Just make sure to give yourself plenty of time to look over the manual and really get familiar with the Power-Flo Pro 2800 before you need to use it! It’ll save you tons of stress on your marriage…I promise!

Tape It Off

Other than wiping down the walls, the only real prep we had to do before spray was to use plastic tarp to cover everything we didn’t want white. This included the windows, front door, air conditioning unit, and counter-top. We didn’t bother covering up the floors because they were in terrible shape and we knew we had to replace them anyway. Other than that, everything else got a fresh coat of Extra White Harmony Interior Acrylic Latex Paint from Sherwin-Williams! As I mentioned in my first post, we’ve used Sherwin-Williams’ Harmony paint exclusively in our house since we moved in 8 years ago. It’s zero VOC formula makes painting a room while managing two crazy little boys a worry-free option!

The Dreaded Ceiling

As to be expected, that beautiful slatted ceiling was a huge pain in our backside. The walls seriously took two coats and were finished over the course of 2 1-hour sessions…and then we got to the roof. Being the DIY novices that we are, we decided to apply the same paint to the ceiling and got two coats in before realizing that it wasn’t working. A quick run out to Sherwin-Williams for some Harmony Primer and we were back in business.

Conquering the Ceiling

The primer covered the dark wood that was still showing through the first layers of paint like a dream! Two more additional coats of Extra White (since the primer wasn’t the same shade of white) and the ceiling was finally done. If you’re keeping track, that’s FIVE coats of paint we had to apply to the ceiling. Holy neck sprain, Batman! Thank goodness we were using the sprayer because the application time was seriously cut in two. As you can see in the video below, the HomeRight Power-Flo Pro 2800 was absolutely essential to completing this stage in renovating The Craft Cottage!

A Blank Canvas

So, there you have it. The Craft Cottage is now a completely white room (other than the counter top, still need to figure out what to do with that!) and we’re now turning our attention to the floors (cue the dark piano music.) We’ve already a hit a few snags but as they say, the only way to get through this is to get through it. Onward, friends!