Sunday, October 6, 2013

Family Room nearly complete!!

The new couch has finally arrived!!  Here it is shortly after delivery...








Ikea lighting installed to the almost completed Family Room... looks sharp!!  I think it all goes so well with the Ikea chair... starting to really feel like a home!




Monday, September 16, 2013

Rug... check!!!

I have finally found a rug for the living room.  It has finally arrived after being on backorder for over a month.  I absolutely love the design and color!!  Now... off to continue decorating!




Batten Board Abound

Here we are... mid- batten board!!  Every board is now in place.  All we have left is to caulk, spackle, sand, prime and paint!!







    

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Bye Bye Green Bathroom

Despite all the painting we have done and will do, the house WAS in good shape...just not the colors we like.  The upstairs bathroom is a good example: cute but too dark and green for our taste.  With the vanity stained with gel stain to be less red/cherry, we decided to go light blue. Light blue and white bead board reminds us of our Mom's house on Cape Cod.  And then we found a great pale blue called Yarmouth Blue...our Mom used to work in Yarmouth on the Cape...so the color was picked!  With just one coat on, the room is already so much lighter and brighter!
Before: Too green
Before: Too dark.
After: Just right


Revere Pewter- O'Brien Style


Revere Pewter is beautiful, popular and infuriating.  It can look gray or beige depending on the lighting, room, etc.  With so much gray going in the house, we hoped it would look beige in the den off the kitchen.  But it took on a gray tone.  So we took the can back to Benjamin Moore and had them add (3 times) more red.

RESULT:  A more beige-y color.  Here is the contrast between Revere Pewter and our customized blend.
Our Beige-y Revere Pewter (l) and Revere Pewter (r)
Our Recipe

2 Coats of Customized Revere Pewter
Customized Revere Pewter on the Paint Can
Before: View into the Den

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Bold and Blue.....Mary's Room

Mary has the smallest of the bedrooms, but it may be the most stylized!  Called an office in the floor plan, it looked really small when we toured the house (filled with office furniture and workout equipment).  But with each change we make, it looks bigger and bigger.



VISION:  Funky!! Bright turquoise, dark gray and black accents, white furniture and a chandelier.  Here is an inspirational Pin(terst) and site- but Mary's room will be a little more modern and darker.
INSPIRATION:  This room has elements of the look she is going for.
PROGRESS: The paint colors Mary picked are Turquoise Tint by Valspar and Amphibian (a gray) by Behr.  Mary, the smart & organized one, used the quilted mattress topper to figure out where the full (yes, full) sized bed will go- and taped it off on the floor.  Her dresser that she has had since she was a baby fits (it is outlined in green tape on the floor of the pic below) and will get a coat of the gray paint. The closet door has come off to save valuable space... a curtain will be purchased later.  Some version of an IKEA hack will be built over the radiator for more space saving.

Turquoise Tint by Valspar
Amphibian by Behr...Jen's love of frogs comes through in this color!!

Old paint, door pre-removal & soon to be covered radiator
Bye bye old light fixture
Hello, Chandelier (pre-painting)
Chandelier purchased from Craigslist for $50 that is currently getting a few coats of high gloss white paint.


MORE DECOR:
Baroque Mirror from Target

Switch Plate from Home Depot that will be painted black.


UPDATED: 50 Shades of Gray...from Benjamin Moore

Nothing THAT exciting here...just the endless search for the perfect gray for the living room.

UPDATE:  Here is the final color selection (first coat only) with a description of how we made it below!!!
Stonington Gray on the wall & Coventry Gray around the fireplace

VISION: Originally the living room was a mustardy yellow, our vision is a pale gray with crisp white trim and a black fireplace. Before Pic (panorama taken before closing):

Who knew gray was the hardest color to pick...these bloggers did HERE and HERE and HERE. Yes, the same colors get debated over and over. The problem is they all look different depending on the lighting in the room, color of the surrounding walls, lighting, etc. Our choices narrowed and expanded to include the usual suspects: Revere Pewter, Stonington Gray, San Antonio Gray, Stormy Monday and Coventry Gray. Some of our pics:
Stonington Gray, Revere Pewter, Harbor Gray and Stormy Monday (lower right)

VERDICT: Katie's Brilliant Design....Stonington Gray (left; light & bright) on the walls & Coventry Gray (right; darker) above and around the fireplace

LESSONS LEARNED: When using a spray painter to do the ceiling, cover EVERY square inch of the floor. After taping off the windows, doorways and fireplace, we covered most of the wood floor, leaving a section uncovered on the opposite side of the room from where we started painting. But small particles of dried paint floated over covering the hardwood floor with a little dusting of paint. Mopping cleaned it up, but slowed us down. RESULT= The room is a lot brighter with a freshly painted ceiling!

Fireplace:  Getting rid of the brick and brass screen (in the garage being painted) using RustOleum High Heat Black Spray from this Pin(terest) and site found HERE.


Fireplace Before
Fireplace During





Fireplace...kind of After- the screen still needs to be returned