I have this conversations with Alex twice a week. When we were picking our living room color I painted a bunch of swatches everywhere and took mental notes of how they looked at different times a day and asked every person that walked into my house what they thought. I asked Alex. “Um, the dark one?” was his reply. I think I’m the one with the problem, though…
Because I don’t like the color anymore.
Ok, maybe two habits. One is buying glorious furniture from Goodwill. Seriously, I feel like something is better if someone owned it before me. I feel like they have been searching for me and now we are soulmates. I snagged this cabinet from goodwill for $10! It’s now laundry room storage.
Let’s not forget my Lamp for $25!
And our newest addition, the Bar. It is actually a sewing table and the top flips out to reveal a lower area where a sewing machine would sit. We have some exciting plans for the bar possibly including 2 new paint colors, storage, refrigeration/ice, and pizzazz. The kicker? We nabbed him for the low low price of $7! That’s a pretty sweet deal.
Stay tuned for his makeover. Let’s not talk about that fact we felt the need for a bar.
Have you customized/repurposed any of your furniture at home?
After the painting is complete (full pics up soon), we will be taking charge of the bathroom on the first floor. When we first moved in, it was the only bathroom in the house that was completely functional despite it’s lack of visual appeal. Once our other 2 bathrooms were serviceable, meaning both the showers and both the toilets worked, we finally took it upon ourselves to get down to business (pun intended) in the downstairs baño. It’s the bathroom people use when we have guests over so I’d like it to be nice. I don’t want my friends and family wondering if they should get a tetanus booster after leaving my house. Right now it’s kind of rough in there.
In a fit of productivity, my sister went crazy on the wallpaper. It was a 40 year old, grimy floral print that just needed to go. The reoccuring issue with this house is that no one thought to put primer under the wallpaper. They just stuck it right on the drywall. The adhesive bonded the wallpaper to the paper front of the drywall so when the wallpaper came down so did the front of the drywall. MAJOR PROBLEM. We had a few choices:
We went ahead and have been refinishing the walls ourselves. Please note this is not something you should try without doing a lot of research before. I am going to be completely honest and tell you that I was way too impatient not to do this my way. We picked up some DAP spackle that specifically says not to use it for skim coating. Once again, I’m incredibly independent/foolhardy. My sister spackled and sanded, then covered the walls with bonding primer. Then she repeated those steps. I’m going to repeat them tonight to finish it off. The walls are definitely improved. She did a great job of fixing the difference in thickness between the areas where the wallpaper ripped the drywall and the rest of the wall.
The walls are nearly completely smooth. I think they just need one more once over.
In preparation of having a bathroom I can be proud of, I also painted the gold mirror frame to freshen it up. What color? You shall see.
Our Bathroom Redo Checklist
After painting the mirror frame, I also painted the cabinet with some paint we had left over from the basement (Bone Folder by Martha Stewart) and sealed it for wipeability. The cabinet was a dark brown and it wasn’t working for me. I like bathrooms to be light and fun. I know you saw the sink. It’s hard to miss. I don’t think it’s in the budget to replace it right now and I’m not sure about using countertop paint on it so it’s staying – for now. I also bought some new hardware for the cabinets. I could not take the weird distressed brass/gold thing going on in there so brushed nickel it is! My aunt is going to show me the tiling ropes so hopefully we can pull this bathroom into modern times together.
Do you have any major projects on your agenda? Think I can tackle this?
You’ve all been sitting on pins and needles waiting to find out what paint color we settled on in this post, right? Da-da-da-da! Dusky Blue aka the one on the left.
We thought the other color, Heavenly Blue, was too baby-blue-in-your-face. We wanted something toned down, and relaxing. When the paint dried it kind of took us by surprise because it was much brighter than we had anticipated. It makes me feel pretty good about dodging the Heavenly Blue bullet because that would have been offensively bright. The cool part of it is that the nice blue makes the white trim and the dark wood doors POP.
We bought the big 5 gallon bucket because we are painting the biggest areas of our house. I did not anticipate it being such a mess. Obviously we missed something.
We still need to paint the stairwell and the upstairs hallway (scary tall ladders, ahoy!), but after that the next step is to organize and hang all of our pictures and art to make it feel like a homey home. I simply can’t wait. Maybe if I’m really lucky, I’ll have new floors by the summer. Oh, and about the title. If you are ever painting and need to use a stool or chair, alternate which leg you use to stand up on it. It’s a great gluteal workout, but I accidently only used the same leg again and again. Obviously I didn’t notice until the next day. No pain, no gain.
Are you working on any major changes in your home?
Hey guys, after taking a much needed yet hectic break for the holidays I’m back with a new post about the trials and tribulations of townhouse updating. I hope you all had a great few weeks, I know I did! I spent my new years day trying to figure this out:
I have been struggling to choose a paint color for my living room/stairwell/upstairs hallway for a while now. There are four different paint colors plastered on most of the walls in my living room that only force me to face my indecisiveness on a daily basis. I’m going for a light grayish blue. It’s the color you see on every wall in the show Best Friends Forever (canceled to my complete sadness). So the four colors I’ve brought home have run the gamut between cornflower to dusky blue and yet I’m not satisfied.
So I started polling all my guests and roommates to find out which would be the most pleasing to the eye. It resulted in a tie between Heavenly Blue and Dusky Blue. Check it.
I think we have come to a decision FINALLY. Mostly because the man of the house has such strong opinions about it. This is extremely rare. I am hoping his confidence is right because I am practically paralyzed with fear that I’ll pick the wrong color.
Do you have an easy time making color decisions? Dusky or Heavenly?
Suburban Fervor 