September 10, 2024

Our Guest Bedroom & Office Using Farrow & Ball Pigeon

Over a year later, we finally painted our guest bedroom & office using Farrow & Ball Pigeon! This is the room where we DIY’d a Murphy bed with built-in inset cabinets (see the tutorial here). I was very excited to reveal it on my Instagram the other day because we are smitten by this paint color! Keep on reading to see the before and after photos, as well as the progression of this room.

Read about how we DIY’d our horizontal Murphy bed with built-in cabinets here

Side note: our projects tend to take longer than what you typically see on social media. We focus a lot on quality and design. Mix that in with work, family and other home projects and it’s a recipe for a long lead time. We try to give ourselves grace on our home journey, especially when we’re doing the work ourselves. I truly appreciate you for sticking it out with us. My intent in sharing is to always encourage, inspire and be a point of resource for this community.

Shop the Room

The guest bedroom & office was put on hold when we decided to add a bathroom inside our loft with Brian’s band practice space. A tunnel was dug up between our garage and house to install a water and sewer line. There was a lot of work happening in our boiler room. Everything in our boiler room had to be moved to the guest bedroom & office. Thus, delaying progress for the guest bedroom & office.

Once we passed our electrical and plumbing inspections for the loft, it was go time! Before I share more reveal photos, here’s a look back at this project after we got done building the horiz ontal Murphy bed with built-in cabinets. Seeing the process always makes us extra grateful for the end result.

Where We Started

This room is approximately 13’9″ x 10’8″ with 7′ ceiling height. It was our dumping ground and an eyesore. It became a bad habit to toss everything on this bed if it didn’t have a place. Kind of like the broken windows theory.

Building the Murphy Bed with Built-in Cabinets

In July of last year, Brian impulsively took apart the bed and entire room. He had this idea to build a Murphy bed with built-in cabinets to make better use of this space and I was totally on board! Taking apart the room was to hold us accountable to follow through.

As a reminder, this room has a ceiling height of 7′ which is why we built a horizontal vs. the traditional vertical Murphy bed. You can read all about the DIY here, including the horizontal Murphy bed kit we used.

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Paint Color Selection

Deciding on a paint color wasn’t easy. Our guest bedroom & office barely gets any natural light because it’s in the basement. There’s an egress window but in the summer time, the hydrangeas out front block most of the sunlight. Our main source of light is the ceiling light. The picture below is from the winter where the snow outside helps to brighten up the room.

We decided to lean into the dark moody feel of this room vs. trying to make it light and bright. Several colors were sampled and ultimately, Farrow & Ball Pigeon was the winner! It’s a blue gray color that feels sophisticated, yet casual all the same.

Level the Floor

Before painting, we decided to rip out the carpet in order to install new flooring. The carpet didn’t do the bedroom & office justice after putting in all that work. However, before we could install new flooring, we had to level out the floor.

We found a pouring company who did a fabulous job! If you’re local to the Twin Cities, I highly recommend them. They were very professional and courteous.

Skim Coat Ceiling, Sand and Prep for Painting

We live in an old house and the walls and ceilings are not perfect. If you look closely at the upper left corner and left side, where the built-in cabinets meet the ceiling and wall, you’ll notice small gaps. To close these gaps, we floated out the ceiling and walls. Then skim coated.

Afterwards, the wood and trim were sanded down. A lot of prep work went into this before we could start priming.

Prime

Now onto the exciting part! For the first.time.ever, we planned on color drenching. Meaning to paint the walls, trim and ceiling the same color. Farrow & Ball was so gracious to send over their recommended primer and paint.

I’ve always admired the color Pigeon from Farrow & Ball. They recommend for color-drenching, to use Dead Flat finish on all the surfaces to give that seamless rich look. And that’s what we did!

The aesthetics of Dead Flat is an ultra-matte look that makes Farrow & Ball‘s rich colors even richer. Also, it’s scrubbable and scuff-resistant which is ideal for high traffic areas.

Install Floor and Paint with Farrow & Ball Pigeon

Prior to painting, we had the floors installed which I’ll save this story for another time.

After the first coat on the Murphy bed, built-ins and doors, I was simultaneously excited and nervous. The color, Pigeon, is a bit of a chameleon. Depending on lighting, it can read more blue gray or taupe gray. I almost second guessed color drenching at this point because I was afraid it would look too dark.

We’ve lived with mostly white walls for so long that going dark, was a little out of our comfort zone. However, our home is our canvas and hope that it’s true for yours. It’s part of the journey to experiment and see every room and corner for its full potential. Thoughtfully creating a home for our family that we love spending time in, is our goal.

After painting the walls, ceiling, trim, Murphy bed and built-in cabinets, the guest bedroom & office started to come to life. We did two coats of Farrow & Ball paint for all the surfaces. Once the doors were installed and the plastic came off, I was in LOVE! I’m so happy we both stepped outside our comfort zone. Here are some before and after photos – enjoy!

Before and After

Before

After

Before

After

Our guest bedroom & office is so much more functional! We only hosts guests a handful of times a year, so a Murphy bed allows us to use the room as an office for our everyday living. Bonus that the built-in cabinets provide more linen storage since we have a small linen closet.

Also, do you see the pipe coming through on the upper left corner in the before photo above? Moving it is non-negotiable. The built-ins cleverly hide them away!