A New Plan for the Powder Room

You might recall that I painted our powder room just last summer, and sadly, it was a fail.  For some reason, the Navy paint color by Sherwin Williams showed every. single. smudge.  And then when we tried to wipe it off, that became a new and bigger smudge.  We have had wonderful luck with Sherwin Williams paint over the years, so, this is not a slam against them.  We used it in two houses that we built, in two houses we remodeled, in apartments and office buildings that we have owned, and it was always a sure thing.  In fact, we have the color Naval (note the difference in spelling) on the interior of our front door and in Mr. Right’s office, and it is behaving just fine.  However, the Navy decided to misbehave.  This all led me to come up with a new plan for our powder room, and I did something I said I would never do again.  I decided to have wallpapered installed  in that tiny room that measures only 3 x 8 with ceilings that are nine feet high.

 

The exact thing that helped me make that decision was this photo that I saw in a magazine.  My heart skipped a beat when I laid my eyes on it.  It was love at first sight.  Before I tucked it away in my decorating file, I ordered a tortoise shell mirror which I used in the painted powder room. When we had the paint fail, I took this photo to our local wallpaper store and asked if they had this paper.  I learned that the actual paper in the magazine is Java Java by China Seas, and if you look closely,  you can see that it is on the diagonal.

 

The people at my local wallpaper store had to go through just two books, and then they found this look-alike by Thibaut.  You don’t know how happy that made me.  I ordered enough for the room, and they gave me the names of five paper hangers to contact.  I called all five, and only one returned the call.  I really got the feeling that he didn’t want to take the time to do my little room.  He hangs paper at places like Churchill Downs (the Derby race track), so why would he want to bother with eight single rolls?  He gave me the run around for six weeks, and then I realized it wasn’t going to happen.  Thankfully, my decorator friend gave me the name of a wonderful paper hanger who returned my call, arrived at our consultation on time, was cheerful and professional, and was willing to do the job.  In fact, he listened to classical music while he worked, did the job in just a few hours, and looked just like J. K. Simmons.  (Thought I would paint that mental picture for you.)

 

The paper has been hung, the room has been put back together, and I will show you the fabulous results soon.  I’ll tell you this much – I LOVE it!

 

 

(before)

And by the way, this is what the room looked like when it was painted.  I kept the same accessories, which I am crazy about, but the new paper makes the room look so much brighter.

 

Thanks so much for stopping by and spending part of your valuable time reading our blog.  We really appreciate each and every one of you.

 

Take care.