-
Painting the Town Neutral
Ok, not the town, but our new house! Can I get a whoop?
It’s probably no secret that I’m a big fan of neutral color palettes. I love color, but for some reason I’m always drawn the the neutrals when I start putting our home together. (Black, white and gray anyone?) Since our previous place was a rental, we weren’t allowed to paint. And almost everything was covered in FLAT white paint. Ugh. Don’t get me wrong though. I love, love, love white. But when you have 2 kids and 2 dogs, flat paint just doesn’t cut it. I need washability people!
To say that I’m excited to change things up is an understatement. Honestly, I happier than Pharrell to be able to put that brush to the wall. (Just try and tell me that you can listen to that song and your day is not a even a little brighter!)
Click here to open the Pharrell Williams – Happy (Official Music Video) on Youtube. Together with my husband, we picked out some soothing colors that will hopefully flow well together. All of our color choices are from Benjamin Moore, except for one from Restoration Hardware. Weird how that worked out.
This is just an initial paint palette and is subject to change in the future as we start getting color on the walls and decorating. Let’s take a closer look at which colors will be used for which spaces, shall we?
The main floor of our home is painted with yellows, oranges and browns, lending to that Tuscan feel. I can definitely see how those colors could liven up a space with the right decor. But as I mentioned before, I’m a neutral girl, and Tuscany is more of a place that I, personally, would like to visit vs. live in, so we are doing things a bit differently for our kitchen, living room, and family room/ playroom.
As I mentioned before, I love white, but we just hated the fact that our rental was painted with flat paint, although having white walls was really wonderful for some photography stuff. So we are planning on using some white eggshell finish paint in our bedroom. Our son’s room will get the gray treatment and our daughter chose a calm and airy blue.
Neither of our bathrooms have windows, so I’m hoping that these colors won’t make them seem too dark or smaller than they are. We may end up adding some sort of wall treatment too, if we need to brighten up the spaces more.
So, that’s the direction we are planning on going. We haven’t figured out paint colors for any of our storage spaces (laundry room, pantry, etc.,) but there will be plenty of time for that after we get the main living areas of our home looking how we want them. Yeah, that includes not only painting the walls, but the trim as well. Sounds like fun, right?
-
Kid’s Table Makeover
About a year and a half ago, I was browsing a neighborhood garage sale near a friend’s home and I found a really adorable matching kid’s table and chairs. It was priced at $20.00 for the set. We had already owned a table and chair set for the kiddos, so 20 bucks was a bit out of my price range, even though I liked this one much better.
Later that evening, I headed back to that same friend’s house for a girls’ night and noticed that cute wooden set, curbside, as if it was just waiting for the garbage man to collect it. My natural instincts to rescue it kicked in and before I knew it, it was mine. *Insert evil laugh here.*
After sitting around here for quit some time, I decided to give the table and chairs the makeover they had been screaming for.
First, I used our hand sander and 80 grit sandpaper to remove the old finish from the wood. This process was a huge pain in the butt. It seemed like years had passed before I had finished removing it all, but in reality, it was only 4 days.
There were a few hard to reach places I used the sanding attachment on our dermal tool to buff.
Once all of the old stain had been cleared away, I treated the wood with 120 grit sandpaper.
Next, I wiped down all surfaces to eliminate the dust.
Then, It was time to stain the wood. The stain my husband and I agreed on was Rustoleum Weathered Gray. When, I applied it to a small section, I was surprisingly disappointed with the look. It was too gray! (That is something I never thought I would say, since each room of my house contains some form of gray.) It looked more like I had painted it rather than stained it. My solution to this problem was to mix this weathered gray with Minwax Special Walnut stain. The Minwax is the exact stain I had used on my dining room table. Hooray for no additional cost!
The combination of these two stains worked perfectly! It was exactly the look I going for, a warm distressed gray-ish color.
Finally, I applied 4 coats of Minwax Polycrylic to give the table and chairs a little shine and a lot of durability. It is a kid’s table after all.
I am so happy with the final product! Even with all the work of sanding, this has been one of my favorite projects to date.
-
LOVEly Heart Candle Holder
So, here at EJD, we thought it would be a great idea to do a week of Valentine’s Day type projects. I was racking my brain, trying come up with something to no avail. It was like trying to make “fetch” the new word for cool, and it just wasn’t happening. That’s so fetch. Umm, no. No it’s not.
Anyway, after perusing the aisles of the dollar store, putting things into my cart that I really don’t need, I found a small glass candle holder and decided to try and make it more lovey dovey.
For this simple project, I used my candle holder, blue painter’s tape, scissors, chalkboard paint, and a foam craft brush.
Oh, and also a pen (not pictured above.) With the pen, I free handed the shape of a heart onto the sticky back side of two pieces of painter’s tape. I chose the back because I figured my tape might lose a little bit of its tackiness if I put it down on a surface. Generally, it is not
fetchcool for people to be tacky, but with tape, it is expected.
Next, I used my scissors to cut out the tape heart and attached it to the candle holder.
Then I covered the entire glass with several coats of chalkboard paint. You can see in the photo below that there was a little, ahem, leakage under the tape.
Luckily, it was easily fixable with
my tonguesome water and a paper towel. I just wiped it off while it was still wet, but you could totally use a sharp edge to scrape off any excess once it is dry.
I think I did a total of 3 coats of paint. I love the contrast of the matte look that the chalkboard paint gives against the shine of the glass. I don’t love that the paint looks so textured, but you could totally fix that by using spray paint instead.
This heart candle holder also has a neat little trick up its sleeve. If you face the unpainted section towards the wall, the light from the candle will shine through and make a fabulous heart shaped projection. Pretty
fetchcool, right?
-
So The Thing Is
If you are one of the two people who stop by our blog regularly, you may have noticed a slight decrease in our posting. Emily’s family has been battling round after round of sickness, like the flu and colds and Mad Cow Disease. Just kidding on that last one. But they have been totes under the weather.
And, well, I’ve been keeping a huge secret. WE’VE MOVED. That is right. After some major packing, purging, and transporting of our stuff, we are finally getting things unpacked and organized. Yay! I’m so excited to get started decorating our new place. My husband likes to say that I’m “setting up the Barbie Dream House.” And he may or may not be referring to tendencies from my childhood where I would to set up toys, but not really play with them. Emily can vouch for this. Just ask her!
Anyway, I wanted to share a sneak peek of our new place. It does need some updating and tweaking to fit our style, but we are excited to tackle it and get our DIY on.
There are a lot of things we want to do, but we know that it is going to take some time and elbow grease to get everything the way we want it. One of the first things we are really planning to tackle is the paint. (Oh fun. Who wants to come help?) But flooring, kitchen cabinets, door hardware, trim, appliances, and lighting (bye, bye boob lights) are all on the list. Plus, I’m sure I probably forgot to name like 200 other things.
Stay tuned to see what the kids think about the new place, the paint colors we are planning to use, and of course more pics of this new DIY adventure!