August arrived and i found I had an itch to scratch – redecorating the guest room. I have long admired the all-white look, and figured it might just be possible in a lesser-used room such as this. In any case, anything would be better than an old beige carpet paired with insipid yellow walls.
It seems that unless there is a lot of natural light in the room, white tones can turn grey and pallid in low light, so this being a sun-drenched south facing room makes it ideal for the palette. The quintessential white room must contain white floorboards, and having peeled up the old carpet in our bedroom last year to reveal beautiful pine boards, i reckoned the guest room would be similar. Indeed i was most delighted to find the original floor in pristine condition, well sealed and with only a single layer of ugly dark stain to contend with. It’s a draughty old house we have and removing carpet initially seemed a bit counterintuitive, but as usual form over function won and i reasoned that an injection of warm colour into the room in other ways would hopefully distract the shivering guest.
For experts in white paint one can look no further than my favourite friends Mr Farrow and Mrs Ball. They have a vast range of the non-colour which in certainly made the choosing all the more arduous. As Gemma and I perused the range in the Stockbridge shop for nearly an hour, she aptly coined the discussion ‘a most middle class experience’. 4 testers and 4 days later, but none the wiser i opted for Great White, with grey undertones, for the floor and woodwork, and Pointing, an off-white, for the walls. I was hesitant about the room adopting the austere feel of a low budget asylum so as a minor compromise (probably only obvious to me) I softened the look a little by going for a creamier tone on the walls.
F&B paint not being the cheapest substance, i tried to avoid my usual shortcuts and thus committed to sanding down the floors in case over time the floor paint rubbed off the oily stain underneath. Initially this was to take place within another blatant short-cut involving completing one half of the floor, and moving the furniture onto it before doing the second half.
Work commenced with a belt sander….
But proceedings were halted after 10 minutes when it became clear the task was something akin to washing the floor with a toothbrush. Into the bargain this put paid to my other shortcut, as the job suddenly became infinitely more heavy-duty….
I hired a proper floor sanding machine and did untold damage to my eardrums and probably the floorboards too with this hefty piece of kit. Though not a job for the fainthearted, the beautiful pine boards eventually emerged from their toxic captivity and without much ado i got to work on the undercoat. Before long the boards were painted and we were testing the integrity with some gratuitous tap dancing. So far, no chips.
