Mid Century Modern Angry Birds

Sound crazy to you? It all works out in the end, trust me.

When Sherwin Williams asked me if I’d like to try their Emerald paint, of course I said YES! You know how much I love Sherwin Williams around here, almost all my furniture is painted with it.

But then when I thought about what I should paint, I couldn’t really come up with anything here that needed to be done. Shocker I know. I hadn’t been planning to repaint any rooms, and I thought another furniture makeover would just be underwhelming.

So, I did what any blogger would do and forced a friend of mine into a total room makeover! Actually she was very excited when I offered her the paint 🙂 No strong arming involved.  And since her oldest son (we’ll call him R for the purposes of this post) had just moved into his own room, it was the perfect time to do something special in there. During discussions about plans, I jokingly boasted that I could “totally trick out his room for about $150.”

It took about 5 seconds for her to agree to that!

Would now be a good time to mention that he had zero furniture other than a bed?

He used to share a room with his brother, so everything got shuffled around (and some stuff got tossed)…it was the perfect blank slate! Over the course of several conversations about colors, design, etc, I realized I wanted to use R’s favorite game as inspiration: Angry Birds.

Are you familiar with the Chip It application that Sherwin Williams offers? If not, check it out here. Basically you can use a button on your toolbar to pull SW colors from any image. It will offer you two sets, which is super handy! I used some merchandise images to get several color pallets, then picked the red (Real Red SW 6868) and yellowy orange (Gold Crest SW 6670) as accent colors. The carpet in the room is blue, so I wanted to stay away from that on the walls. Grey seemed like the best fit, but the ones suggested here were too blue-y for my liking. I ended up going with Light French Grey (SW 0055) on the walls.

R’s favorite color is red, but since his room doesn’t get a lot of natural light, his mom and I made the executive decision to go with the grey on the walls and do some stripes in the red and yellow.

Let me just say that if you have a chance to use Emerald for your next project, definitely try it! This paint is so smooth and dreamy to work with. The coverage is great (there may or may not have been some writing on the walls in here), and there is almost NO SMELL! That’s because this is a zero VOC paint…not low, but zero! Emerald is designed to have great washability in all finishes, which makes it great for kids rooms of course 🙂 Also I noticed that it really doesn’t splatter at all like some other paints do (you know, like that off the roller fine mist). It does seem a little bit thinner in consistency, so I was surprised that it covered so well. If you tend to be heavy handed when applying paint, just watch your drips and be more conservative when loading up your roller. Generally that’s good paint practice anyway, but this paint is so smooth you really do not want to apply it heavily. We pretty much covered the whole room in one coat + touch ups. Perfect! Emerald also dries super fast, which is awesome for impatient people like me 🙂 I had stripes taped the same day!

My method with the stripes was random, in fact I let the kiddos (there are 3) pick some of the locations. Now there were A TON of DIY projects also happening in this room, so in order to not leave you hanging I will show you the final shots now and share the details later in the week. It suffices to say that the paint was really the star in this room, it transformed the walls and also the furniture. Keep in mind we were working with in our $150 budget, so the room doesn’t have a lot of “fluff” (i.e. I didn’t stage it with a bunch of accessories).

I cannot believe how cute the room turned out for a mere $150 (plus donated paint). The furniture I found on Craigslist is a 1960s Stanley Furniture Company set, which worked perfectly with the color choices and gave the room a sort of retro feel. I just went with it! I promise to share a budget break down, details of the DIY projects, and the furniture before and afters with you later this week 🙂

But wait! I have great news! If you want to try the Emerald paint, Sherwin Williams is having a HUGE sale next week!

Head over to your local Sherwin Williams and ask the staff about Emerald. I had heard great things about it from other bloggers, and the people at my local store were equally as excited to tell me about it. I really enjoyed using it, and with the sale it would be a STEAL of a deal! Also don’t forget your brushes, trays, and rollers…those are on sale too. Let me know if you give Emerald a go, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts!