My husband and I bought our house in December last year. We have slowly (very slowly) been doing changes to it to make it our own. We (more like me) have so many plans we want to do, and it feels a lot better when we can do it ourselves. After browsing the internet, mainly Pinterest, I knew what I wanted to do to my office. First, was definitely going to be a fresh coat of paint… and colour! It took quite a few trips to Bunnings to figure out the best mint colour. I decided on Dulux Wash & Wear Low Sheen in Chalk Blue. It’s bright but I think it’s perfect for brightening up the room. I’m really into mint and gold right now too.

This is the before shot of the room. This post is only going to be about the walls but it is a work in progress and I will be updating my progress of the new office later on. As you can see, the trims/architraves are all stained and varnished with a dark brown colour. The walls are slightly off-white, and everything is a bit dated. These dark architraves are throughout the whole house and we want to paint them all white. It really does brighten up the place just by doing this small change! But boy, does it take a fair few coats to get it to white. First a sanded them and then did a quick wash with sugar soap. To paint, I did one undercoat using the Dulux Acrylic Primer Sealer Undercoat. Then it was around 3-4 coats of the Dulux Aquanamel White Semi Gloss Enamel. It might’ve been better doing 2 undercoats though. Either way, it’s a few coats to get the dark brown to white. I also chose the water based paint because it dries faster and also doesn’t yellow over time. But it takes a few weeks before the paint is fully cured.

We also painted the ceiling white, and then did 3 sides of the room Chalk Blue. For the front wall I wanted to do these mint and white stripes. It’s super easy to do and turned out great! First we painted it all white. Then I marked out the striped measurements with a pencil and used painters tape to line it up. I read on another blog to paint a coat of the ‘base’ colour (in my case it’s white) over the tape to ‘seal’ that colour in before painting the ‘stripe’ colour. This way when you peel the tape off you’ll get a nice straight crisp line. Believe me it works! Then it’s just 2 coats of the mint colour and voila!

I’m absolutely in love! I think the fresh colours make the room look a lot brighter and happier! And the striped wall looks like wallpaper, but it’s not! It’s SO easy to do! Definitely will be doing more striped walls in other rooms around the house.

I’ll give you guys updates on my office in future posts. I plan on moving my desk away from the window – I don’t like how it blocked the window. Anyway I’ll let you know what I do with my space!