Interior doors-a before and after

I know y'all love a good before and after. This is a small one that is part of a major undertaking that we have begun before we sell our house.

I see a white door and I want to paint it black

Our interior doors are white...yawn. A few years ago, I suggested to Mr. Designdumonde that a budget friendly upgrade might involve painting all 27 of these doors black. He politely told me that he was not on board. Well, actually not politely.

doors to my studio

Fast forward to "return on investment time" and we are adding touches to make our house stand out.
It sort of reminds me of the time I wanted to paint my dated kitchen cabinets white and Mr. D said something like, "Are you crazy, woman! I am not painting all that!!!" Then when it was time to sell, he had this great idea to paint the cabinets. So go our adventures.

The walls in all of the entry, kitchen, family room and upstairs hall will be painted a pale gray because it is a partially open plan house.

My studio doors are now black.

2 down. 25 to go.

House tour by paint color

One of the first things I was dying to do to my house when we first moved in was paint the walls. It is relatively cheap and I was aching to cover the "Swiss Coffee" or builder beige walls.

My initial instinct was to choose the same colors from my previous house that I loved. Luckily, my husband procrastinated long enough for me to come to my senses. The light is far better in this house and we have some different furniture in the rooms.

Although it wasn't the first room I tackled my living room is just inside the front door.

I used Sherwin-Williams Faint Coral. It is a pale pink that leans slightly towards peach and is a little muddy.

It might be my favorite paint color in the house. It is understated and sophisticated, not the least bit sweet.

Connected to this formal living room is my formal dining room and I wanted a foil for the feminine room on the other side of the archway. A masculine, cigar box was the intended look.

We used S-W Rugged Brown in a gloss for the walls.

Upstairs I used a color that was most like the color of my previous bedroom but far better.

S-W Wondrous Blue is one of those chameleon colors that changes dramatically with the light. It is blue most of the time but the lavender and gray undertones sometimes become the main event.

My son's room was fair game after he left for college and the very first One Room Challenge  linking event was the impetus to get me going.

I knew I wanted a moody, masculine color and S-W Naval was an easy decision.

My youngest daughter's room has been a decision problem for me. One day I just could not stand it any longer and ran out for paint samples.

I ended up using Benjamin Moore's Key Pearl which is as pale as my living room pink but a much cleaner color. It is not overly sweet or overly pink, just a barely there color that lets other items do the talking.

Read more about how I chose the pink HERE.

Confession: we have a vast open plan on the remainder of our first floor that we have not painted in the more than 3 years we have been here. Now that we have decided to move, it is on the must do list but while I look at paint I can't help but fantasize about the colors for the next house.

Do you love or loath choosing paint colors?

This is the best stuff..

This is the best stuff for earthquake zones, people with children and pets or generally clumsy folks.

Museum putty is kind of like Silly Putty but it helps keep breakables in place.

I recently bought some and had not employed its use when a very careless cleaning lady knocked a family keepsake across the room, chipping it.

I wish I had discovered it years ago.

There are several brands. I bought this one.

I feel like I am the last person to discover this.

Tuesday tidbits

Good morning, or whatever time it is.

Just a few random things today, each of which would not make a post on its own.

My Valentine's day gift arrived !
 I just need to figure out how many pillows I want and its off to the workroom.

 The rug I posted about yesterday arrived and was smaller than I anticipated so it won't work for my kitchen.

 I have been too exhausted to figure out another spot. On Saturday, got up at 4 am to drive across the state for my son's college audition. Their lack of organization was rather frustrating but we have decided that his second choice college is out of the question and his third and fourth do not have on campus housing so I nixed them. So frustrating U. it is.

The up side of the tiring day in the car was a quick meet up and lunch with my cousin. We talked about his desire to build a house but not just any house. He used the words modern, rustic and shipping container. That's right. He wants a shipping container house.

He found a lot that is basically a hillside and therefore cheap and is looking into the other particulars to build a house out of shipping containers cantilevered  into a hillside.

He mentioned clean lines, rough natural surfaces and art filled spaces.

He is an engineer so I was surprised at his desire for style.

I did muster the energy for a bit of a gallery wall in the upstairs hall.

I have been meaning to showcase a bit of my little peanut's art work but procrastination won until I decided to stop offering these frames on Etsy. Too many quality issues but they were fine for this semi-permanent gallery.

I grouped them near her hilariously serious school picture.

I added a fourth at the last minute.

This one makes me smile,

My father and I on the left and my oldest son with his guitar

 This is the opposite wall and has taken me forever to get these two pictures up.

Yes, I have five kids and yes only two of them are on the wall. We are a picture challenged family as in getting them taken not in just me displaying them.

 I know that not all of you are into food and/or meat but Monday's lunch was this luscious prime beef tenderloin. There are perks for being the butcher's wife!

Another-It's about dern time project and DIY

I procrastinated on this project for almost two years. I bought woven wood shades and wanted to line them before hanging them in my west facing family room. Sorry there is no before photo. I still had ugly mini-blinds from the builder.

Keep reading there is a how-to below.

First, let me ask...does anyone have any tips on how to photograph sunny windows? Anyone?.. Beuller?

The four windows are the only natural light in the room and the get sun all day hence, the need to line the shades.

The other issue was whether to mount them inside or hang them high and outside the window frame. Outside would have been ideal but the ceilings are 9 ft and the windows go nearly to the floor. I was unable to find any shades long enough so inside mount it had to be.

Here is the low down on how to line these. Lay the shade string side up and untie the strings. Pull the strings out of all of the loops but not out of the shade mechanism.

Cut your lining (I used blackout lining) to the width of your shade and hem or glue a 3/4 inch seam along each edge.

I used Fabri-tac glue and  even though I am generally opposed to gluing fabric it really is the best way to attach the lining to the shade. The glue is acetone based so be careful what you get iton but it is also flexible when dry which is key for this project.

This is the tricky part to explain. You have to glue the fabric in sections cutting a small slit to pull the rings through.

I start with the bottom edge and about 8 inches along each side and carefully a small amount on the sold parts of the shade in the center. You don't want the glue to glob through.

Feel for the rings and carefully make a slit. Do NOT press down to cut as you might cut the strings holding the rings in place. It is more of a snag and pull motion that calls for a very sharp utility knife.

Carefully pull each ring through and continue gluing fabric to the next set of rings and repeat until you are at the top of the shade.

Make a hem along the top with the extra fabric and restring your shade.

Make sure to tie the ends on the last ring.

 

I might have procrastinated for a ridiculous amount of time but I was still lining the last shade and insisting that my husband get busy hanging those shades!

My naked library

Before I show you my painted room let me tell you that I had a few comments on yesterday's post telling me about 7 coat painting nightmares and my last red room was one of those stories too.

We began with a tinted primer but it was so lightly tinted that I was scared.

The paint was decidedly orange when wet and for some reason my husband was expecting the same color as our living room in our old house. *sigh* Why don't they listen when we talk?

The first coat was really promising. Other red paints are so transparent that they appear hot pink until about the third coat and then it still is not even.

I am pleased to say that spending $50 bucks (or $35 on sale) is well worth it to have to only put on two coats. There were a few touch up spots near the ceiling that I painted this morning after the two coats of red.

The color is a bit brighter and orange than it appears on my computer.

Clearly, I have work to do. The switchplates are still missing and there is the tiny matter about books in a library. We have no bookshelves yet and are undecided about what to do. My husband would like to build them but has no time.

Also I need to get rid of those awful mini blinds. I will use a shade I bought and the gold silk curtains, reworked somehow, from our old house and layer an oriental rug over the wall-to-wall even though I would rather see it disappear.

I found this vanity on eBay and think it might work as a desk in there. I am going to look at it on Saturday.

For now I am going to start dragging stuff in there like this chair...

and hanging architectural prints and other goodies.

Oh no! Paint

That is really me

Today and tomorrow are reserved for painting the library at our house. Finally, my husband has two days off in a row and it was his idea to tackle the project. If it had been my idea...uh...no, it wouldn't be happening.

My point is, I am busy but here is a preview.

Screen grab from S-W color visualizer

First let me tell you that this is not my house or my stuff pictured. Y'all know I could not hang that fugly art and I won't even bring up everything else in this travesty of a room. The wall color is what is important here. It is Sherwin-Williams Chinese Red- 0057. Last time I painted a room red my husband and I were dating and I almost got the boot over 5 and a half million coats it took to cover. This time I bought tinted primer and better paint.

I don't get anything from Sherwin-Williams for telling you that many of their products are great. I particularly like their Superpaint because it actually covered maroon in one coat. I was using light blue to cover that vampire blood color!

Today I am using Duration because the Superpaint did not come in Chinese Red. Apparently it is so pigment heavy that only certain formulas can be mixed in that color.

Wish me luck. I hate painting but not as much as my husband does.

Making things better

The dividing archway between my living and dining rooms is something that has bothered me since I bought this house a year ago.

View from the living room before moving in

The dining room has wainscotting and a chair rail and the living room does not. The problem is that these half walls with columns only separate the space and do not define where the outside walls stop. This means that unless I add something both rooms would have to be the same color.

One side brown the other pink

I wanted two different colored rooms but did not want a line of paint to be the separating mark.

Trim complete

My rather handy husband used a board and rope trim to create this simple finishing touch. As he said, " No one will ever walk in and say, Wow what great trim! but it vastly improves the rooms."

It is  a bittersweet reward to finish a project with no wow factor but I know it's there.