Addison's Anime Room Part 2

I have wanted to paint Addison's furniture for a long time, but I was always too afraid.  Most of her furniture is either veneer or laminate so I wasn't sure how the paint would stick.  My fear of peeling paint was finally overcome by the fact that her room was beginning to look like a swap meet!  Not one piece of furniture in her room matched.  Her cargo bed was purchased at a garage sale for $40.00 and I whitewashed it.  Her chest of drawers was purchased by my parents when the Baby Superstore was still around and it has a cherry finish.  She has a hand-me-down, white IKEA shelf that used to store CD's in my husband's old bachelor pad and a cherry finish bookshelf that I bought for $50.00 at a resale shop.  Finally, my work was getting rid of an old desk and I snagged it!  It is the usual light color "wood" laminate.  In order to give Addison a proper "tween" room, I realized something had to be done to the furniture.
I searched the web looking for anything that could help me tackle this monstrous task.  What I found was this very helpful blog that you can check out here.
Here are some of the pictures before I used the primer.

This is the "resale shop" bookcase.  I bought the Zinser's 1-2-3 Bulls eye primer that Lindsay suggested on her blog.  I'm glad I did.  It goes on nicely and sticks to everything!

This is the chest of drawers with the hardware already taken off!  There I go again...getting started before I take the "before" pictures.

And here's a picture of the "throw-away" desk from my work.  Pretty basic, but oh so much potential!
I primed everything first with the Zinser's and then I actually waited a week to let it cure, which is torturously long for me.  It was well worth the wait.  I then covered the bed, shelves, and chest of drawers in a basic black interior paint and let it dry for a few days.  I finished everything with a coat of clear semi-gloss minwax.

I also changed the hardware on the chest of drawers.  The old ones were brass.

I found these at Lowe's.

I love how the bookcase turned out!  Addison loves it too!  She quickly filled it with her extensive book collection.  Alphabetized no less!

Warrior Cats are her favorites!

The last thing I painted was the desk.  I wanted something in her room to have color and really pop.  So I decided to paint her desk pink.  My husband suggested that I paint the desktop black so that our daughter doesn't get headaches from staring at a hot pink desk.  He's so smart!

Primed and ready

TAAA DAAA!  Don't you just love it?  I know I do!  It is my favorite piece of furniture in her room.

I went to Hobby Lobby and bought these cute little pails for her pens and pencils.  She loves to draw and is actually really good at it!

Even her piggy bank got a make-over!

                                         

The finishing touch was this super cool bedspread and sheet set from Target.  It was $80.00 and comes with the comforter, bedskirt, pillowcase, flat sheet, fitted sheet, and decorative sham!  Addison gives her room two thumbs up!  Her smile is what makes the weeks of hard work worth it!

Addison's Anime Room

My youngest daughter, Addison, has been asking for several years to paint her room.  This year she will be going into 5th grade.  She will be 11 in November and I felt like she was definitely ready to transition to a "tween" room.  The pink room we did when she was 5 was just not cutting it anymore.  So we went down to our local Lowe's store and checked out some paint swatches.  The colors she chose were Hang Ten (a dark turquois) and Kiwi Splash (very bright lime green) by Valspar.  Neither were colors that I would have chosen, but she is old enough to be able to design her own room.  We took the swatches home and put them on her wall.  Within a few days she decided she wanted to use the Hang Ten.  I really didn't want to have to paint the walls with primer and since we were painting over a light pink, I chose the Valspar Signature Colors paint with the primer already added.  We bought our paint and headed home.

 The original pink

These are not the best "before" shots.  I tend to jump into a project, forgetting to take pictures until I've already moved stuff around.  Anyway, you get the idea of how light the pink was in her room.  Addison was so excited to help and we both got busy painting.  I have to say, she was a BIG help.  She focused on the lower half of the walls, while I hit the top half.

I REALLY loved the paint.  It went on very smooth and it definitely covered better than the Olympus paint I used to use.  The Valspar was almost double the price, but it was well worth it.  I still put two coats on her walls, but since the primer was already in the paint I was able to skip that step.

Addison loves anime, so we went on the web and found a site that sells anime posters.  Two of her favorites are Chobits and Shugo Chara.  She is actually not allowed to watch Chobits since it is rated PG-14, but she has seen all of the episodes of the other.  These were the posters she chose.

She loves them and she was really excited about the fact that they came all the way from China.  I can't wait for her room to be complete.  Next week, I will focus on her furniture and show you how I painted it.