One Room Challenge: Week 6 | Painting and moving a medallion

I can’t believe this space finally feels like a room! It’s funny how a little primer and paint goes a looong way. As a result, week 6 of the One Room Challenge has been my favorite yet.

Painting and moving a medallion

Priming and painting

After sanding my arms off, I was eager to move on to primer. We primed using our favorite primer: Kilz Restoration. By the way, this is not sponsored. We genuinely love this stuff! Kilz covers many surfaces so well, including that icky, yellow nicotine color of our home’s previous indoor smokers. 

New drywall notoriously soaks up primer. I should have done two coats of primer on the ceiling instead of just one to compensate for that. Elsewhere, one coat of primer was just fine.

Painting problems

If you follow me on Instagram, there’s a chance you saw me rant about not being able to buy the paint of my preference. I wanted Glidden’s Speedwall in flat white because I had already painted the hallway with that paint. The dining room is open to the hallway, so I wanted all of the paint to flow seamlessly. However, I could not find Speedwall in flat white anywhere near me! I even drove 30 minutes to another Home Depot thinking that they would have it according to their app. 

HD usually always has Glidden Speedwall in flat white available. That is exactly the reason why I chose it to begin with — high availability plus no need to take the can to the paint counter for mixing. Surprise surprise…the app was wrong! 

I had to compromise and buy the normal Glidden’s Essential in flat white. I can see the difference between the two white paints, unfortunately. The Glidden Essentials has a more bluish, grayish undertone, while the Speedwall version has a yellow undertone. I’m afraid that I probably will need to repaint the hallway to compensate for this difference. It’s disappointing, but it is what it is. The walls needed two coats of paint because the Glidden Essentials is very thin. I think the ceiling needs another coat of paint, but I’ll address that after the One Room Challenge is finished.

We also repainted the baseboard and door trim.

Moving a medallion

Next, we moved on to the ceiling medallion. Before, the medallion was not centered in the room. Actually, the dining room was actually the living and dining room before we moved in. I wanted this entire space to be one large dining room. Therefore, we moved the medallion to the center of the space to go perfectly above our dining room table.

To do so, we carefully cut the medallion from its former location while we ripped down the old ceiling. I then pried the remaining drywall from the back of the medallion. After that, I primed and painted it. We reinstalled the medallion using liquid nail with a 2×4, a jack, and a soft foam pad to hold it in place for 48 hours. That allowed the medallion to adhere to the ceiling without using additional screws or nails. It adds much-needed architectural character to the space. Plus, it’s made of genuine horsehair plaster!

Where’s the color?

Finally, I know there is a lot of white going on in this dining room. It’s intentional for this point in our renovation journey. See, I want to live in a blank slate color wise before I inject more vibrant hues to the space. For this project, I intend on adding color through the artwork. To be honest, I’m still having second doubts of how all of the design will come together, but I am choosing to listen to my inner voice. My strategy is to lay off the social media and resist the urge to incessantly research. I know I need to trust myself to make mistakes. It is called the One Room Challenge, right? I challenge myself to trust my inner voice.

-Felicia.