Ain’t she a beauty? I’m sure some little girl loved every square inch of these glittery pink walls. We however, did not. It was a project we were willing to wait on- our priorities moving in were to paint the main living spaces. The Pebto-Bismol room is merely an empty spare room- hopefully a future nursery down the road. So when a long Thanksgiving weekend came and Black Friday shopping was finished, we decided to tackle this little project.

First we noticed the glitter. It’s hardly noticeable to they eye until you’re up close. But WHY!? If you take ANYTHING from this blog post it’s this: NEVER EVER IN YOUR RIGHT MIND SHOULD YOU THINK THAT ADDING GLITTER TO A WALL IS A GOOD IDEA. NEVER! Even if your daughter begs and pleads, even if it’s the top trend in design magazines (it never will be, trust me), even if it promises to come off easily….DON’T DO IT. It was barely noticeable to the eye, but rub your hands over the wall and the texture was horrendous. Upon closer inspection it looked like salt crystals or something of the like. Maybe a DIY gone bad? I don’t know. All we did know was that it needed to be GONE. Stat.

So we reached out to all the professionals on Facebook (because isn’t that where you go for all your problems these days?) and we took a hodge podge of the tips and decided on an action plan: I convinced Greg to help because it meant he could buy a new power towel. Win. We purchased an orbital sander (it was Black Friday after all….) and because Greg was so excited to use it he got to work sanding the walls. Win, win! It took some elbow grease and plenty of sanding to get the glitter worked out. On the one wall where the glittery girly goodness was especially thick we decided ‘good enough’ was acceptable. It wasn’t worth the fight (or dust).

Once the sanding was finished we wiped down the walls with wet rags. This was a VERY important step. The truth is, I hate painting for this reason alone- the prep. It’s exhausting. I want progress right away and prep takes forrrrrrrever if you want it to turn out well. Hear me out- take the time to prep no matter how much you hate it. Once the walls were wiped down, we taped up the room and FINALLY it was time to paint!

We bought all the paint for our home before we moved in. I knew exactly what I wanted for the main living spaces and we wanted to keep this spare room in a similar grey color family. Greg loves green and wanted something with a green tint which I agreed was fine. We settled on a color that seemed more grey than green. It was lovingly called ‘filmy green’…and that should’ve been our first clue. We cracked open the can and I shrieked a bit. It was very…..pastel. A lightish-brightish-pastel green. Not what I had envisioned. BUT, as I’ve learned over the years, sometimes you have to get it on the wall first. So I took a deep breath, decided to give it a chance and painted a test area. It was awful. Getting it on the wall did not make it better. In fact, it may have been worse.

So we put the lid on, cleaned the brush, and ran to Repcolite in search of something a bit more promising. We still wanted to stick with the green/grey but were now fearful that our eyes would play tricks on us again. After careful deliberation we decided on ‘iced marble’ (the name definitely promised better results) Benjamin Moore 1578, if you’re curious.

We got the new paint home, cracked the lid and let out a sigh of relief. It looked better. We dipped the brush in and started to cut in the room. The color was a bit darker than expected, but it wasn’t bad. It’s always hard to tell if you like a color as you cut in….our situation looked like a sad watermelon- green around the edges with a pink middle. Once we were finally finished around the edges, we got to rolling on the rest. We slowly fell head over heels.

The one wall that we left sanded as ‘good enough’ really didn’t look too bad. If you get close enough (like nose to the wall) you can tell (but really, if any of you have your nose to our wall we have bigger issues…) and so we stepped back and admired the transformation.

WE LOVED IT. Like really loved it. More than we expected to. Like we both said we wished we would’ve used this color in other areas of the house. So now our horrendous Pebto-Bismol room is one of our absolute favorites. Sometimes a glitter disaster, a wrong paint color, and last minute color choice can turn an eye sore into a piece de resistance!

Have you ever regretted a paint color choice? Any DIY projects gone bad? How about experiences with glitter on the wall? Share your tips, stories, and pics below!