A week ago, I moved into my new "apartment." Really, I am renting the corner bedroom of a house with three other girls my age. I took a big hit on space and privacy for lower rent. Instead of a private bathroom, I share one with two of the roommates. Instead of a private den, I hang out in the small all-purpose living room. Instead of a kitchen that could host a Broadway production, I am cooking on less counter space than my mom has in her kitchen. I sacrificed a lot, but it may be worth it because my landlord allowed me to paint my bedroom. Actually, my landlord vaguely encouraged me to paint the bedroom.
These pictures do no justice to the atrocity of the pink color of the room. My camera is packed somewhere at the bottom of a box, so I had to settle with my poor quality cell phone telephone pictures. The original color, and I don't know who in their right mind would paint a living space this color, was a very obnoxious Barbie pink. There is no way I will spend even a year of my life in a bedroom that color.
I wish I would have gotten actual before and after pictures. These were taken after I had already scrubbed the carpet and walls sterile. Apparently, one of the old roommates kept two dogs in this room and left their smell behind. The carpet was dingy, stained, and had a funky odor that I can't quite describe. First thing I did was scrub the carpet and wash the walls/ windows. That took care of the smell and the dingy feeling. Next, I chose a color at the hardware store, picked up some primer, grabbed a pint of white, and bought a painting kit. I took a stack of free newspaper from the bin on campus, because I neither wanted to buy anything to put down nor pay for replacing the carpet lest I paint all over it as well.
Even having the primer on the wall felt a lot better than that deplorable pink color. The room instantly felt twice the size with a brighter color. Not to mention, it looked three times more clean. I swear, I scrubbed as hard as I could with Pinesol and it never felt like I was getting anything off the walls.
This whole painting process would have gone a lot more quickly had I done everything linearly. I didn't have a solid weekend to just get it all done. I had to work, which greatly limited the time I had to hunker down. Fortunately, my roommates were really great about me leaving my mess in the living room while I tried to finish this project. They understood that it took me two coats of primer and two coats of paint just to disguise all traces of the old room.
Normally I reserve all shades of yellow as a kitchen color only, but had to make an exception this time. I wanted to match the paint to my comforter set, but the room is far too small to put up a blue or green. Yellow is the only other color in the comforter, so rather than risk a bad accenting color, I took the easy way out and went with a bright yellow. "Sun Burst" is the actual name. All things done, I'm very pleased with the way things turned out.
The only problem I have now is how dingy the rest of the house looks now that my bedroom is fresh and clean. I know I'm going to end up scrubbing carpets later this week. The hallway is disgusting. OCD OCD OCD OCD.
My new roommates are great. Night and day personalities compared to my old roommates, who were great as well. So far I'm liking this place, and Mr. Kitty has not yet begun to randomly attack me like so many other cats tend to do. If I could just find some cheap/free furniture, I would be set.
