And then there was...paint.

Finally, the long-awaited day of painting the guest room finally dawned. If you remember correctly, Eric's parents were due to visit, and time was of the essence to finish the guest room before their arrival last May. But it was not to be. In the end, we offered up the master bedroom to his parents, while we slept in a Gyproc-clad room. Look on the bright side - at least we had a door.

With the background of this giclée print serving as inspiration, we wanted a colour that was not too yellow, and not too orange, not too bright, and not too light either. That narrowed things down to 12, 876 colours.

After much hemming and hawing, (I'm being PC: we were fighting and arguing), we chose a colour:

The walls are Gildden's "Ginger Peachy", a misnomer as the end result is neither ginger-y or peach-y, which was my greatest fear. I didn't want the quintessential pastel guestroom of horrors, but rather a warm, comforting ambiance by day or by night. The ceiling is Glidden's "A Touch of Nectar". (Who comes up with these names? And can I have their job?) These two colours are one beside the other on the Glidden palette, however, the two colours can't be more different. One has more ochre, the other more fuschia, yet somehow, they work harmoniously.

We have a fierce loyalty to Sico paint, so we decided to use Sico professional paint, and have them custom mix the Glidden colours. Erring on the side of caution, Eric went out and bought "A Touch of Nectar" first, and painted all walls and ceiling with this colour. The end result was too pale, and didn't really match the colour on the paint chip perfectly, so we took the darker shade just above it, "Ginger Peachy", and painted the four walls with this shade, leaving the ceiling in "A Touch of Nectar". The end result was just right.

Aesthetics aside, the most shocking part of all, here's the temperature four hours after lighting a fire in the wood stove located downstairs, after not having heated all day:

Unreal. 18.4C.

We went from this:

From -3 to 18 degrees without even really trying! (Well...trying to heat that is! We tried really, really hard with the rebuilding and insulation).

Well bowl me over...

The comfort level of the guest room is high. The floor's not quite finished, (let me get RIGHT ON THAT!), so we haven't moved any proper furniture into the space, but the room feels good. Comfortable insulated goodness all around.

Compare it to the uninsulated hell we were subjecting guests to before:

And it's a miracle guests actually come back to our house, isn't it?

In all fairness, the photo above was taken after we tore down the old pine bead-board - we weren't living in a complete hovel, it only looks that way.

Above, you can see the 2x6's Eric used to beef up the outside wall, and the 6" layer of Roxul insulation he placed between the studs. This is a west-facing orientation, and the kilometre of open field across the road (read: wicked winds!) meant this room was virtually inhabitable during the winter before our renovations. Turning on the baseboard meant heating the great outdoors, so we simply shut the two rooms on this side of the house when cold winds blew. (Which is what, realistically? Four months of the year?)

The rot above was found on the south side wall, essentially behind where the headboard of the bed meets the knee-wall. This rot was the worst we found, and the super-fine dust created by trimming the bad wood away permeated its way through the ENTIRE house. It was far worse than Gyproc dust, and I thought that was bad.

Now, we have straight, colourful walls. An inviting atmosphere, compared to the knotty pine purgatory of before.

The old pine floor had been shellac'd or varnished, I never did find out which. But it was I who dutifully got down on hands and knees for three days, and using a heat gun and putty knife, removed the entire finish. Now we (the Royal "We") are going to sand using 60 grit sandpaper, and paint the entire floor white. We might live to regret this decision (well, truth be told, I already do, since Eric's attitude about a white floor came down to this, and I quote: "You want a white floor? Well fine, YOU get a white floor...have fun doing it, because I won't").

Which leads me to another story, for another day.