Posts Tagged ‘painting’

Mood Board: Foyer

August 9th, 2010

Mood Board: Foyer Benjamin Moore: Silver Satin: I chose this color because we have the powerful plum in the living room and a light blue/gray in the dining room, and we really needed something that would compliment both of those colors. I would also like it to be in the kitchen and bathroom as well, so I needed something I could see in those rooms. I like the silver/gray because it compliments the colors we already have, and I can tie in the plum and blue in with the rooms painted the silver.

Lowers: Rustic Chandelier: I loved, loved, loved this chandelier, and I love the impact it has right when you walk in the house. We have windows in the door that show the light, and once we have our storm door installed the chandelier will be seen from the walkway.

Fabric: The fabric I found on clearance somewhere a while back, and I really love the character it has. We have one window on the landing of the second floor, so I need to update the curtains for that. I thought this fabric would be perfect for it, since I only have enough fabric for one window really.

Decor Pad: Inspiration: I recently found this website, and I love looking at the pictures for inspiration. It helped me to decide what to do with the stairs that would make them more impacting and warm. I also knew I wanted to add photos, but I like the pops of text with color that the other picture provides.

Stepping up

August 7th, 2010

We’ve been working on the foyer (here), and I’ve been trying to determine what to do to make it as warm and inviting as possible. One of the things I’ve been looking up are ideas for the stairs. Right now they’re painted completely brown, but I found these two  photos where the vertical portion is white with the top brown/black.

Decor Pad

Decor Pad

I really, really like the second photo with the dark, slate gray color wall, but alas, we will not be painting our foyer that dark. However, I really am thinking I’ll paint the backside of the stairs white when I paint the window sill on the second floor. The other option is a stair runner like this one:

Decor Pad

Hmmm…which way would you choose, or should I do both?

Welcome to our home

August 3rd, 2010

I’ve recently been focusing on the foyer, because it’s the first thing people see INSIDE the house. Here is what it looked like before:

Foyer Before

Foyer Before

While it doesn’t look terrible in the photo, there’s a lot left to be desired. For one, the walls and the ceiling were the same color, and I wasn’t too fond of it. Second, the walls on the way up to the second floor were extremely dirty and scuffed, and the second photo shows a bit more of that. Since we’re updating the flooring in the foyer soon, I realized that we’d need to paint the trim and walls beforehand.

So we started to tedious process of painting the ceiling first, which has made such a difference right away. We used a plain white, flat paint for the ceiling in here:

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It took two coats of paint, but here is the final product:

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Next we started to paint the door and the trim, but luckily, after cleaning the trim it really didn’t need to be painted. There were a few scuffs that needed touch ups, but the doors were all that really needed painted. With as much trim that we’ll need to paint in this house, I was glad to be saved of painting some of it.

Freshly painted

We’re now in the process of picking out a paint color for the walls. I’m definitely thinking of gray that will match the bolder colors we already have in the house, but it will transfer well upstairs since the foyer wraps around to the second floor.

I also found another blog that just updated their foyer here. Seeing those photos almost made me want to paint the trim black (I’ve seen it on another blog), but I realized it wouldn’t go with the plum in the living room at all so my sanity was saved.

From brown, brown, brown to blue

July 25th, 2010

When we bought the house, there was a lot of brown EVERYWHERE. I’d bought my couch to get me through college in a neutral brown, and I love dark brown, wood furniture so I had a lot of that. When we got into the house, the walls were brown, and I felt like I was basically living in a huge turd. Not to mention that I love, love, love color, so the  brown was too much for me. Here is a picture of the dining room before to remind you, and you can see all the photos of the original room here:

After we painted the living room, the next room we painted was the dining room. Unfortunately, we did not do the “top down” method, so we just slapped some paint on the walls. Now you can tell the trim is dirty and off-white. Right now I’m working on the foyer, and I made sure to start with the ceiling. I think the number one annoying thing is realizing that I was in such a hurry to get something done that we didn’t research enough. I am learning as I go though.

Without further ado, here are photos of the dining room as it stands right now:

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The brown curtains that were in the living room made their way into the dining room until I can figure out a fabric choice for in there. The antique desk has been moved out to open the room up.

The next few projects for the room include: painting the trim, putting in the new flooring, updating the light fixture, figuring out what to put in the little nook next to the fireplace, and getting some more frames up.

Preview of Bedroom

March 1st, 2010

We started painting the master bedroom here, and here it is mid-painting:

Bedroom in progress

Our pitiful master bedroom

February 3rd, 2010

So back in this post, I discussed some goals for this year, and one of  the areas was our master bedroom. It’s pretty pathetic to be honest. It had off white (pink?) walls, and the ceiling  is not white with splotches of white paint around one edge. It actually used to be a porch, so there is a sub-flooring in the room but no flooring. We’ve been trying to take it in small doses.

Right now we’ve mostly just been living in the house to get a feel for things that we thought we hated that we actually like, and things that we thought would be fine that are actually a nightmare. I’m just glad that we decided to be patient, so that we could discover them. If we’d started tearing in right away, we might have made some changes that were not necessary or neglected problems that would annoy us down the road.

Ah, so the bedroom, here it is in all its glory (or lack of):

Pre-painting

Pre-painting: pink walls. This is right before we started painting the bedroom, so we had moved a lot of the furniture out. Here are our goals for this room: paint the ceiling, add flooring, finish drywall, and add crown molding. Once we’ve completed those things we’ll really start to focus on furniture. I like to take things in stages with this house, so that we have time to see what will really mesh together.

I created a mood board a while back for this room, and most of it still applies. We’re a bit unsure about the wardrobe at this point, but we’re going to revisit it once we finish the projects and get the bed.