10 Year Old Girls Room

I went to the Ethan Allen sale last week.  I had gone looking for a three drawer from their Maison collection.  Unfortunately they didn't have it.  What they did have was this beauty:

It is the perfect start to my daughter's room.  It's sitting in my living room while I start transform my daughter's room.

This is my daughter's room before:

I had sponge painted the walls over ten years ago and had the picket fence border.  The border was not wallpaper.  It was a product that you held against the wall and put a damp sponge on.  It was kind of like the temporary tattoos you put on your kids.  It looked just like it was hand painted.  I had kept the packaging so that when the day came for me to change it I would know how.  It said simply to paint over it when you were ready to redecorate.

So bright and early yesterday morning I emptied the room of everything except for the bed which I left in the center of the room...so it wasn't in my way.

I patched the many holes in the walls left from the picture hangers, drapery rods etc.  I then sanded and thought I was good to go.

I realized right away that paint alone was not going to cover the border (even thought I had bought paint with primer).  So I put two coats of primer over the border and sponge paint.  Then I painted two coats of the Benjamin Moore Whispering Spring on three of the walls, leaving the window wall for an accent wall.  After the two coats of primer and then two coats of paint, I could still see the border.  I continued to paint more coats of paint only over the border area.  I painted an additional three or four coats of paint and the border still showed through.  I decided to paint two more coats of primer over the border and then two more coats of paint.  Can you believe it...the border still shows through - I can still see a pink cast.

At this point, frustrated and tired,  I moved on to the accent wall.  I painted the accent wall Restoration Hardware Petal Pink (which I had left over from my daughter's bathroom).   The pink paint covered the border in one coat (I guess since it is pink??).  For this feature wall, I decided I wanted it to be stenciled.  The overall plan for the room is shabby chic/romantic/country french all rolled together.

I started by centering the stencil in the center of the wall and worked my way to the right first.

I continued in the same way working my way to the right and then to the left.  With a stencil you are supposed to line up the dots each time.  Not so easy as the stencil gets more and more filled with paint.  This was my first time stenciling such a large area.

I worked until 10:30 last night (I had begun work on the room at 8am).  The feature wall came out beautiful (it took four hours) - I will show it to you when all four walls are complete.  The other three walls I need to deal with this morning.  I will be calling my local paint store to find out what I can do to cover this border.  Otherwise I will need to come up with a plan B.   I can't wait to show you the finished room.

Let me know what you think so far...and if you have any suggestions as to how to cover the painted border when 6 coats of primer and 6 coats of paint hasn't worked so far.

-Judy

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