Tour The Rooms — Buddy's Room

We (as in Hubby and I) bred a sports lover. It's evident in his room.

When we refer to his room with other people, we say, "It's the one with the big men on the wall at the top of the stairs."

Buddy loves red. If we'd let him have his walls red, he would have. But with the red shelves it would be just too much.

So we picked a green that reminds us of the Green Monster at Fenway Park. It's by Behr and is called Vineyard.

This is the view when you walk in the room. The denim curtain panels I recycled from old bed skirts here.

You can see all the card collecting he does. He's been at it now for just over seven years. It's even how he learned to alphabetize.

Standing in front of the window looking back toward the door wall, this is the view:

I guess we should say, "Big men on the wall and tiny men on the shelves," when we are referring to his room.

And here is a better look at the bed wall:

I just got the duvet cover at Ikea last week. Buddy had been using his duvet with no cover on it for a year. We just hadn't been able to find anything we liked. Ikea finally had a few new patterns, and this one seemed to work.

The funny thing is that Hubby brought Buddy a new pair of Razorback pajama pants home from his trip last week. They are plaid and almost match the pattern and color perfectly. We told him when he wears them he'll be camouflaged and we won't be able to find him!

I guess it would work during a game of hide and seek!

The red wall shelves and shelving units are from Ikea.

Tour The Rooms — Sparky's Room

This is the color that I thought I would be painting either my living room or my bedroom. I happened to have the swatch card and it's the one that Sparky picked! I wouldn't let her do the glowing lime green like the bathroom.

She's very happy with it and thinks it brings out the green she has in the room nicely.

This is the view when you walk in her room out the front windows of the house. (None of our bedrooms are on the first floor.) Her room is slightly recessed from the doorway.

She painted the picture on the wall between the windows when she was eight years old. There was an older couple in Illinois from our church that were good friends of ours, and he taught her how to paint. She has some natural artistic ability.

This is the view to the left.

We (as in I) just hung that mirror after we got done painting. I found it for half price at Hobby Lobby about a month ago and knew it would be perfect for that spot. She has trouble getting to a mirror in the bathroom occasionally when everyone is getting ready at the same time. I couldn't hang it too high or she wouldn't be able to see in it.

This is the view to the right from the door.

She definitely has some green in here!

Her bed, nightstands, green shelves, and red dressers are all from Ikea.

Her paint color is Cloudy Day by Behr. I have a lighter color of blue for my room, but if I don't like it, I'm going with this one.

It's Official

We can't move.


There is too much painting happening around here!

Bathrooms RevealedAlternately Titled: How To Not Paint Your Kitchen

I am totally the queen of starting a project in one place and having it run rampant into other places.

I decided the week of October 11th (when Sparky was in Bolivia and Hubby was in El Paso or Washington, D.C., I forget which) would be a good time to paint the kitchen.

We'd already painted the living room. Other than me painting the mud room and powder room, we still had builder beige throughout our house. We've been here almost two years.

In picking a color, I had to make sure it matched with the back splash we put up. It needed to look nice with the bold living room color. It also needed to have the same undertones as the carpet and the fireplace tile in the living room.

I also started thinking ahead to the common hallways and what color they would be, so that all the colors would look good as a group since it's fairly open everywhere on the first floor. I planned to use the color I picked for the first floor hallways in all the stairways and hallways throughout the house, so that was in the back of my mind in the thought process.

I had tentatively picked out a color for our master bathroom and had the color card for it. I decided that it would also be a good color for the kitchen. I picked a color that was only one shade lighter for the hallways. I decided the color for the kitchen and master bathroom would also be a good color choice for the second floor loft.

I went to Home Depot and purchased paint in the right types for the areas I was going to paint. I got the sample of the bright green to test in the bathroom then.

I started painting the hallways on the first floor. That was what was different in this post! Also the fringe on the curtain was added.

I went to the second floor and did the hallway. There's not much common hallway on the second floor since the large area is the loft.

When I switched colors and started painting the loft, I decided to move the desk with the computer into the rec room. It's an 'L'-shaped desk on a shelving unit from Ikea. The desk had to be taken off, so since I was moving things around in the rec room and putting the desk back together, I decided I'd go ahead and paint that room too. You know, save some steps for later.

So it was back to Home Depot to pick a color. Buddy wants everything red, which wasn't an option, orange wouldn't work, I couldn't do green or I'd look green all the time, yellow and purple are automatically not considered in our house (sorry if you love those colors), and neutral was out because Buddy wanted 'color' in the room. Blue, my favorite color, was the choice, so we picked one that both boys and I could agree on. I'll show you that room in a different post.

That trip to Home Depot I also got the green paint in the right type for a bathroom, and I purchased a bright white for the ceiling and for all of Chatty's bathroom.

After I had the green paint up, I had a guy come by and do some repair work on a spot on the wall that had gotten wet, he caulked the dickens out of both bathrooms, and I had him go ahead and paint both ceilings and Chatty's bathroom walls. He also put up new light fixtures.

Here is the bathroom that Sparky, Buddy, and Caboose share.

When the door is shut with the light on inside, you can see green glowing from underneath. Still.

Here is Chatty's bathroom after it was finished.

The kitchen (my original project) and master bathroom are still not painted.

This post is linked to Metamorphosis Monday at Naps on the Porch and Show Us Your Life - Bathrooms at Kelly's Korner.

Not BlueAlternately Titled "The Room That's Glowing"

This is the bathroom that Sparky, Buddy, and Caboose share. I'm hoping that once the shower curtain goes back up it helps deflect the glare coming out into the hall.

Seriously. After one coat last night there was a definite green glow in the hall when the light was on in that bathroom.

I'm waiting for the second coat to dry today.

It appears to match the Garnier bottle. Could that be considered a plus?

Blue

Does this give you a better idea what was going on in these pictures?

It's a little more obvious here. The color and the in-progress mess.

That's one long wall in those two pictures. It's the length of a three-car garage. It took a full gallon of paint for that one wall. Two coats. Behr Ultra Paint plus Primer.

In the last week I've used nine gallons of paint...all by myself...Hubby's out of town.

Sneak Peek

Because I don't have time for words to go with the pictures right now.

Can you tell what's different?

Finally Finished!

The project that wouldn't end has ended.

This is the best before picture I could find.

Unfortunately it doesn't show the knobs from the doors. But I did take pictures of them before I tossed them.

When I unscrewed them before I painted the doors, they came apart.

Being screwed on is what kept them together.

I wanted new door hardware anyway. I couldn't find anything with the small spread these had, so I patched up the holes and drilled new ones.

Paint and power tools all in one project. If it hadn't taken the better part of the week it might have been exciting.

The Project That Won't End

It takes so much longer to paint furniture than I thought it would.

In this picture, the left one has a primer, and the top of the right one has the primer and two additional coats of a glossy paint that matches our trim color.

We thought having multiple shades of whites would be about as bad as all the woods were in the room with the new wall color. We knew the paint color since they left some in the basement, and we were set.

I've had these shelves since I was a senior in high school. They moved with us Hubby's entire military career. I have to have the left one for my doll collection since the top has glass shelving and doors.

There is one on the other side of the room (remember the hole picture). I also have the doors for the bottom of these, the edges of the glass doors for the one with the dolls, and two shelves that were removable. Long, long project (three days at least, and I consider any project I can't finish before bed long), but it's going to be worth it when they are finished.

How We Pick a Paint Color

The Nester did a post on how to pick a paint color.

It was after we picked a paint color for our living room.

She had links with other suggestions and recommendations on how to pick a paint color. All of them were about neutral paint colors.

We did not pick a neutral paint color.

I've mentioned many times that my favorite color is blue. I realize that I cannot paint every room in my house blue.

I've also mentioned that my favorite color combination is fuchsia and orange, and I also realize that those paint colors would not look good in my living room. Soft versions of those colors might go in Chatty's room, but that's the extent of those colors for any room in our home.

We also have a lot of Americana in our home and that color scheme. I love the blue and cranberry colors. I love stars and Colonial art. But dark blue on my living room wall didn't seem an option, and cranberry red also didn't seem an option. No red seemed an option.

And before you say, "I saw your post the other day when you were starting. You painted it red!" Nope, not red. That's the disadvantage of lighting, cameras, computers, and monitors.

Our way to pick a paint color was not using a pillow or other accent in the room as a starting point. We also knew we couldn't use a neutral in the brown family since we had different wood colors, a brown sofa, and a tan/camel-ish extra large chair (that The Nester would also despise).

Our expert way to pick a paint color — take the pair of shorts the color I loved that I thought might look good, hold it up all over the room, take it to Home Depot and have it color matched in the Behr Paint Plus Primer, and paint the walls.




It's a dark burnt orange color.

Here are the shorts in front of my red and pink shirts.

We've also moved our furniture around, which I was thinking about doing and was further encouraged after reading another post by The Nester. She's making all kinds of work for Hubby. He's going to not like her after he reads this post.

But I can't share pictures with you yet. I will as soon as someone in the house paints three of the wood shelves that are in the living room that I've had since I was a senior in high school. They're going to be painted the same eggshell-ish color as the trim in the room.

We still have the kitchen to finish too. I never have been able to stand caulking. I found out that dealing with grout is thousands times worse. Now we need to caulk around the tile and paint the kitchen. I'll let that color be a surprise. Hubby said maybe he'll paint the kitchen in a month and a half when the nightmare from the living room is gone. Edges with dark paint weren't fun.

Builder Beige Goes Blue

When you enter the house from the garage, you enter chaos.

We have a place for shoes and a coat, but it was sort of makeshift until we formally completed it into a mudroom area.

It was supposed to be a closet with two sliding doors and a wire hanging shelf, so basically a coat closet. It would have been nice to have, but we thought it would be better to have a spot for all the little people in our house (who aren't so little anymore) to sit and take off their shoes or put their shoes on when coming in or going out of the house.

A major build wasn't happening any time soon. I saw some pictures I liked that required much less construction that included some wall hooks and a long shelf with baskets.

I thought painting the area first would be a good idea.

But then I had to decide on a color, and it needed to at least not clash with the floor.

Since blue is my favorite color, and there are some blue shadings in the floor, I opted for blue.

I painted it on Sunday night after we got home from Awana.

Three of the kids have their shoe storage boxes/seating units right here.

Ignore the fact that I don't have a cute white shelf up above the hooks yet with some baskets for hats and stuff.

I liked the color so much, and it is right next to the powder room, so I decided I'd paint it the same color.

Like last night at 10:30 p.m. Until 2:30 a.m., because there are lots of crevices in a bathroom.

The bathroom is also not perfect. There is a white square behind the toilet tank where my brush wouldn't reach. I went in on all four sides as far as I could. Unless somebody stands above it and looks down, they won't see it. It's not worth taking the toilet out, and I don't have a longer brush right now.

I love it anyway!

(Still need a new light fixture.)

This is the what I see when I come in from the garage now.

I discovered I don't enjoy prep work, and that at 2:30 in the morning you don't care how much paint you get on your hands or wipe on your old pajama pants, as long as you don't get it on the cabinet, counter, toilet, or floor. Or hair or glasses.