Have you ever tried painting walls not knowing what kind of paint you were painting over? We recently started a coastal-style renovation of our family cottage, Graystone Beach, which is on the shores of Lake Huron, Ontario. You can find more information about the cottage including a pre-renovation video tour of the home in this recent post.
The first project we’re embarking upon is a makeover of one of the two bedrooms, the Orchardview Room. We recently shared our overall coastal design plan for this room including the before photos and our planned colour-scheme and DIY’s.
Our mom painted the Orchardview Room about 10 years ago using a dark purplish-blue paint with a glossy finish. She can’t quite remember where the paint came from. I think it was left-over kitchen and bath paint that I had used for painting walls in my bathroom when I was in university. But she wasn’t convinced (maybe it was oil-based?) as she’s been known to collect used paints from friends and buy them on clearance at the store.
Moreover, the baseboard, window and door trim were real wood which my parents had stained and sealed with a polyurethane high-gloss finish many years ago. They have a beautiful embossed design on them and we considered just leaving them untouched but in the end decided to paint them white as well.
How to Paint a Wall with a Glossy Finish and Stained Wood Trim
So we had no idea what we were really working with in painting the walls and we were worried about how to refinish the wood trim. We headed to our local Home Hardware and with the help of the consultant picked up a can of the Beauti-Tone Fast Dry Oil Primer Sealer. This low-odour all surface primer product was ideal because we could use it to prime the dark, glossy walls as well as the wood trim all at the same time. It resists the bleed-through of tannin stains from wood and blocks household stains such as crayon, dirt and food. With my four messy little munchkins, this seemed like the perfect primer for the job!
We applied one coat of the primer to cover the dark colors of the walls and trim. In retrospect, two coats likely would have provided fuller coverage of the surfaces especially since we decided to go VERY light with the walls. After contemplating several shades of white (it’s a lot harder than it seems at first!) we settled on a cool white, Melting Glacier with an eggshell finish in Beauti-Tone’s Natura interior paint line. This NO VOC latex paint is endorsed as an environmentally conscious product. The virtually odorless paint is fantastic for painting in the winter when windows need to be closed and ideal for nursery or kids’ rooms walls.
Nothing says #Holidays like a little cottage Reno using No VOC paint by @home_hardware . #homerenovation pic.twitter.com/9i90IFqt9W
— SustainMyCraftHabit (@SustainMyCraftH) December 27, 2016
We used two coats of the Melting Glacier paint to paint the walls of the room. We then painted the primed baseboards and window and door trim with Glidden Pro Interior Latex Satin Eggshell (untinted) which was left over from a previous project.
We can’t get over the transformation from just painting walls and trim in the room. It looks so much brighter, larger and cleaner. As these things tend to go, once we finished painting the walls we noticed that the ceiling and doors could also use fresh coats of paint! Projects for another weekend…
Now that the walls and trim are painted, we’ll be starting on some DIY accessories to dress up the Orchardview Room. Be sure to follow us on Instagram where we’re sharing the process and details along the way!
Do you have any tips for how to paint a room especially painting over oil-based paints with latex?