The upstairs bedroom is fairly large, about 15 by 15 feet, and we use it as a guestroom. It’s in the same general condition as the rest of the house: it has a great original wood floor, the windows are small and drafty, and the wallpaper is old and in bad shape. It’s a cute space, though, and the angled walls give the room a definite antique feel.

We only took a couple of pictures of the room as it originally stood. The wallpaper was pretty rundown, and the rugs in the room had a distinct moldy smell to them, so we threw them away:

The stairs coming up from the kitchen open into this room. The doorway is short (about 5 feet tall), but somehow adds a cozy feel to the room.

I was kind of in a hurry when I painted this room (one of our daughters and granddaughter were coming to visit, and I wanted this room done for them), so I didn’t take many pictures during the project.

The first step was to remove the wallpaper. To do this I scored the entire wallpaper surface with a scoring tool from Zinsser, cost was about $9:

After scoring everything I sprayed a solution of warm water and 10% apple vinegar onto the wallpaper. I let the glue soften for about 10 minutes and then peeled the wallpaper off. Whatever pieces didn’t come off I sprayed again and then scraped off with a paint scraper. This took a few hours, but it all came off reasonably easily. After picking up the soggy bits of wallpaper off the floor I was presented with this:

Somehow dirt had managed to accumulate under the wallpaper, so the lime green walls were filthy. I spent another hour or so scraping the remainder of the wallpaper glue off and washing the dirt off the walls.

I then used some paintable caulk to seal all of the joints in the baseboards, corners, and trim pieces around the windows.

I let the caulk dry for a couple of hours, and then painted a coat of primer over the walls and ceiling (I like to use Kilz 2 latex primer…it has good coverage, isn’t too expensive, and dries quickly.) After the primer dried I painted the ceiling with two coats of white ceiling paint (Behr Premium Plus Interior Ceiling Paint, Flat from Home Depot.) Ceiling paint is supposed to be slightly thicker than wall paint to help prevent drips, but as far as I can tell the two types of paint drip about the same amount.

After the ceiling paint dried I put two coats of Behr interior latex paint (satin finish) on the walls using a standard roller. It was getting pretty late at this point so after cleaning the painting gear I went to bed while the paint dried.

In the morning I checked the room and everything looked good, so I moved the furniture back into place:

Because our grandaughter will be sleeping in this room when she visits (and because I’m a big goofy grandpa who goes to great lengths to entertain the grandbaby), I spent another couple of hours sticking glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. I never had much luck with the paper stickers, so I put a couple of packs of these up:

https://www.amazon.com/Realistic-Domed-Starry-Perfect-Bedding/dp/B072BGVSK6/

They look good at night, and stay illuminated for about an hour after the lights are turned off. (Update: after six months none of the stars have fallen off, so I’m happy with them):

I still have to paint all the trim at some point, but the old paint isn’t too bad so I’ll let it go for awhile. I also need to make some closet doors (the closet opening isn’t a standard width, so buying doors “off the rack” won’t work.) For now it’s good enough, and our guests will have a comfortable place to sleep, so this project is