Behind the scenes: Morning Room

Yesterday I posted the Morning Room Reveal, but I felt like the post was long enough without adding all the pictures of the painting and framing process. 

So, as promised, today I will show you the behind the scenes of framing out the windows and doorway.  I also wanted to share the wall treatment we went with to create our horizontal stripes.  I should mention that we did the frame outs before I began blogging, so I don't have dimensions or a full step by step, but hopefully this will give you some ideas as to where to get started.  On the frame outs in our house, my brother in law is the one behind the madness.  So, I have to give special thanks to him for all of his hard work.  Framing is his favorite hobby and I am his favorite sister in law, so it works in my favor!  Shhh, did I mention I am his only sister in law ;-)

Let's start with the trim work for the windows...

 First things first, take a hammer, and this is where it gets very technical. ;-) Bang the mess out of the drywall around the inside of the window.  Then, being a bit more gentle, bang around the outside of the window, on the actual wall.  You will see a metal frame piece, so you will just keeping banging around the window until you can pull the frame piece right off.  At this stage, you should be left with the above picture.

Now get out Mr. Vacuum and suck up all those chunks of drywall that are too small to pick up by hand.  Vacuum out the window sills too.

Ahh, nice and clean!  Now on to the frames for the windows.

This is the stage where I wasn't able to get the measurements for you. :-(  But I can tell you that they framed out the sill first and then measured and did the inside frame of the window (the sides and top).  Then they framed out the front of the window (in three pieces).  These are the pieces you see against the wall.   Lastly they took the two pieces that are not painted in the picture and attached them to the center. 

In this photo, I just wanted to show you the difference that trim work can make on a room.  The set of two windows on the left have not been trimmed out yet.  So with just the trim work alone on the set of three windows, to me, makes a huge impact! 

And here is another look at the AFTER when they had been trimmed and painted...

Next Up, the trim out of the doorway entering into the room.  Before we made any changes, the doorway looked like this...

So the before is like any basic entrance way you would find transitioning from one room to the next. 

Again, I have to apologize for not having pictures of each step of the trim out, but since it is a very simple trim, you can hopefully see how it was put together.

Here are the shots of the doorway frame out just before getting painted. 

 For the assembly of this frame out, the first step was to attach the wood to the sides and top (the part in the picture that is painted white was attached first). 

Then, the next step was to attach the boards on the morning room side (down the side of the wall and along the top of the wall). 

The third step was to duplicate step two on the wall of the kitchen side. 

Finally a trim piece was nailed to the top of each finished beam on the morning room and kitchen side.  Confused yet ;)

Here are a few more close ups to hopefully help...

I just noticed my blog name is in the middle of this photo, Nice!  Obviously I am still working out a few photo shop kinks ;)

And here are a few pictures of the doorway frame out after it had been painted.

So let's see what is left, Ahh yes, THE PAINTING ;)

First we painted the room in Quietude by Sherwin Williams (just one shade darker than the kitchen and family room.

Then came taping the walls.  I assisted by holding the leveler. 

Let's just say you really don't want me in charge of anything that has to do with a straight line, unless you are going for the look of crooked lines, then I'm your girl!

 The hubs is a line PERFECTIONIST, so I let him go to town.

Taping takes a looong time to do, but the effect is so worth it!  

I love being the one to say that when I am not the one taping, he he! 

 Alright, now we are talking.  Just about finished with the tape!

Is it weird that my daughter and I both liked the look of the tape and wanted to keep it that way?  My husband thought we were a bit coo coo!

After the room had been taped off, we used Minwax Polycrylic in clear semi gloss.  It made it look like we went one shade darker on the stripes, which I ended up really liking.  I am sure you can get a similar effect to our striping by just using a shade of your paint color in flat and then the same shade in semi or one shade darker in semi.   I think it would look nice either way!

So we brushed on one coat and let it dry for a few hours and went back and did a second coat.

Here is the effect that it gave us...

I hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes of the Morning Room! 

If you have any feedback/comments on what you thought of the room, I would love to hear them :)