We finally got to the point of doing some renovations on the apartment. We are painting the kids' and our bedrooms. Just in time before baby °2 arrives. Hopefully, he will stay in for a few more weeks so we can finish everything!
When we moved in we realized that the bedrooms were worse than we thought, the wallpaper behind the old owner’s furniture was ripped off. Yes, they had kids as well. Maybe it’s good we decided to paint and not to put on wallpapers. We’ll see with time for sure!
I spent a lot of time on Pinterest to find the ideal design for both bedrooms. Something that’s easy to put on but still special. We’ll paint some mountains, one with chalk paint, in the kids’ bedroom and we will have some triangles on one of our walls. Both design supposed to be easy with the help of some masking tape.
My husband got the task to find out about eco paints.
Even years after the application of the paint they release some toxins. Since it’s going into the bedrooms and we’ll stay home during the paint works it was very important for us to get something eco-friendly. I think nowadays it’s much easier to get a hold of some eco paints. Even if you just go to your big local supplier store most of the paint has an eco-label.
And yes, there are ‘healthier’ options from some small suppliers, there is a huge difference in their price. And sometimes it’s not the easiest to get them. We didn’t leave enough time to order something online, and after reading up on the subject I was satisfied with our options in the big store.
If you want to learn more about the toxicity of the paint, do a search on paints with low VOC level.
My father in law is coming to help us with the painting but to leave enough time for him we decided to remove the wallpaper our self. How hard could it be? It doesn’t need to be nice, it’s just removing something from the wall…
Hmm .. I was wrong.
It took much more time than anticipated. We lost a lot of time by experimenting and trying out different tactics. Finally, we fund the perfect and time effective method in one of the bedrooms. But surprise, surprise it wasn’t working in the other one. Not sure why. The winner technique in Pixie’s room was to just rip off the paper, but when we removed it only one part of the paper got off and the back side of the paper was stuck to the wall. I guess the glue they used was very effective. We then sprayed water on the remaining part and then it was easy to remove it. We lost some time by trying to rip off that part but only smaller parts came off and it took more time to remove the smaller wet parts after finding the effective method.
I’m not sure why it didn’t work in the second room. In there nothing seemed to help… it just took a lot of time to finish.
And yes, we realised the main problem the following day. Pixie saw us removing the wallpaper during the weekend so she decided to remove it by herself in the corridor. Yes, we thought that it might happen, but we tried to explain to her, that we are only painting the bedrooms. She so us doing it but never wanted to try so we thought the rest of the flat was safe. Obviously, we were wrong! The corridor wasn’t perfect either but we wanted to do it later. Apparently, Pixie didn’t agree with us. So now we have an extra room to renovate.
My father in law is currently working on the bedrooms but thankfully it seems he will have enough time to put on the base paint and the plaster in the corridor. We’ll finish the design with my husband when he is done because we want to take him to a few touristy places as well, he deserves it after all his hard work.
I’ll write a second post about how it turned out.
As for now, I can recommend Pinterest for easy ideas and if you are only doing a part of your apartment be extra careful about what works your toddlers sees. She will definitely want to copy you!
I’d also recommend a paint that’s easy to wash. Don’t forget kids loved to draw and paint and they won’t always do it on the paper. Just ask the shop assistant for help and choose a type/brand which you can clean. Sometimes satin colour is better in this way than matt.