I’ve taken the last week or so to put some finishing touches on Elsa’s bedroom. At the time of my last post I had yet to paint the edges of the doors or finish painting the radiator. I thought I’d take a quick minute to share the results!

Do you know how toward the end of a painting project you are just SO over painting and the looming clean up is just kinda hanging over you all ominous and heavy like? Then, just about when you are ready to call it, you look in your paint can and it seems that there just MIGHT be enough paint to finish up that one thing that you thought you might have to save for “round 2” so you go for it but then it turns out that you are one radiator section short on paint? You know that feeling, right? Well, that’s just what happened to me. I had painted all the windows, doors and moulding. I was just about to start my clean up when that off white-ish looking radiator was just daring me to test the remaining amount of paint in my can. I went for it and came SO close to finishing. I obviously had to finish what I had started, so off to the store for a quart of Balmy Seas. It was such a bummer, I barely put a dent in that paint can. But, I guess it’s nice to have some extra for touch ups and impromptu projects.

My mom is a super human when it comes to painting things. You name it, I’m pretty sure she has painted it. I had seen her paint a few radiators in my day and after checking the specs on the Behr website and the obvious brush strokes on the current paint job, I decided that it was ok to use standard wall paint on the radiator. I really don’t think that I would have been able to achieve the color blocking effect I was going for had I sprayed the radiator white.

So back to these door edges. I had some paint leftover from painting Elsa’s toy box and just couldn’t really get enough of it. Painting the edge of a door has seriously got to be the easiest way to add an element of surprise to a room. It is so unobtrusive and a really refreshing way to introduce a pop of color to almost ANY situation.

Instead of removing the hardware I used a small sponge brush with a chiseled edge to cut in around it. Those sponge brushes are magical, BTW. Next time you have a painting project I suggest you have a couple on hand. You’d be surprised how handy they are. I did tape off both sides of the door in an effort to achieve a crisp edge and minimize the pink bleeding onto the painted side of the door. This backfired on me a bit. There were so many layers of paint on the front side of the door which resulted in lots of weird pits and channels for paint to bleed into. After hitting the edge with my 3 inch roller I ended up with quite a bit of bleeding. Not to worry though, it just took a quick second to paint over the bleeding with my handy dandy sponge brush. If you decide to try this at your house it may make more sense for you to carefully freehand the edge and forgo the taping all together. There was no bleeding on the back side of the door. The tape stuck well to it and no paint snuck onto the wood varnish.

There it is. That little secret pop of color! All the painting in this girls room is done. Now I can get on to the artwork and textiles. I can’t wait to start picking stuff out!