One of my 2013 goals for the home was to freshen up the living room to make it a little more modern and a little less traditional. In my mind, the first step was to lighten and brighten the color. Here is what the living room was looking like before I changed the paint.
There are a lot of things I really like about the colors. I actually really dig the red. It was already that color when we moved into the house, and I didn’t think that it was something that I would keep, but what do you know, three years later I love it! It really gels with the colors of our artwork and furniture we have in the room. By someone else painting it that bright, saturated red, it forced me to embrace a big bang of color. So the red stays. The problem was the tan. The previous owners had also painted the living room and hallway this tan. It wasn’t bad, but it was a badly done paint job. There were thin spots, previous owner picture holes, and it just looked sloppy. Unfortunately, the previous owners didn’t leave this paint behind (or even a name), so for the last three years I have just ignored it. I decided it was time to fix it, not ignore. Since I had painted the kitchen a nice blushy tan, I thought it would be a great idea to paint the tan walls in the living room and hallway the same tan as the kitchen. I thought it would tie the two rooms together, make it feel more unified, and even bigger. Plus, it would fix the thin spots and old, unspackled holes.
The first step was painting all the trim in the room, including the fireplace and bay window plus all the doors and trim. These had also been in great need of painting, since they were all painted in matte white (I like semi-gloss) and they were thin coats too. The fireplace has had this terribly white blotchy look for too long. Although I severely dislike painting trim, I was so happy to get this done. It’s not picture worthy (you can’t tell that I actually repainted the white in pictures) but in person it is just so much crisper. So once the trim dried, it was time to get my paint on. I did two coats of Valspar’s Riviera Dune in semi-gloss. Since it is a tan going on a tan, I thought I would give you a process shot to show you the difference in color.
In this picture you can see the old wall color (the left) compared to the new wall color (the right). This was a two weekend project so I did half one weekend and the other half this past weekend. Hence the two completely different walls.
Once it is all painted, all thoughts of the other color are washed away and you don’t realize it ever used to be another tan. But Eric and I know, and we love it!
So there it is, a fresher, brighter living room now free of thinning paint and old picture holes. Thank goodness!
[…] Paint hallways and tan walls in living room. – ACCOMPLISHED – They look so fresh and clean. It’s great. Yet I’m already feeling the urge to repaint them… […]ReplyCancel
So if you know me or have been following the blog, you know that I am one sparkly obsessed girl. My mom even tells me that ever since I was a baby, I was always being drawn to items that were sparkly or glittery. I have even been known to say that if I could, I would have every item I own some sort of glittery, sparkly, metallic. Alas those can only be dreams since I like to say I have taste too. And a house or wardrobe full of all glitter, all the time is just ghastly. I also want to have a happy marriage and I think a sparkly house would make the husband yearn for a deep, dark man cave far away from me. So even I know that I have to just drop in the glittery goodness in manageable amounts both in my wardrobe and home. Since I am always looking for dare I say subtle ways to add more glitter glam to the house, I thought I would do a glittery round-up today to help everyone get ideas on how to add some more sparkle to your home.
Take glass bottles and douse them in adhesive, glitter, and a sealer coat to make glitter vases, candle holders, or just stay on their own. This is something that you can do with recyclables for a great upcycle project! I have been meaning to do something like this for a long time. This may be my kick start now!
These are actual serving pieces that you can use, but I thought it could be fun to trace these shapes out of cardboard, cut out, and then glitter ’em up. Wouldn’t that be cute artwork for a kitchen or dining room? On my list now too!
A great way to add a punch of sparkle is through small glittery objects. Nearly any object can be glitterized (can I patent that word?!) to add just a little something to a room.
Um, hello. That is a glitter coffee table. Yet, it weaves into the room so effortlessly that it’s not overwhelming. Well done. But don’t know if I could slide this one into the Rapp household…
Glitter Willow (source not linked)
Glitter and light! Yes! I am all about ambient lighting, so putting this in a great vase and putting it in a corner of your living room would really up the cozy element.
I think any cute little animal grabbed from a toy store or a thrift store can get super cute and super chic with a little color and glitter. How much do you want this adorable hippo? Can I get away with this with no children in the house to blame it on? I say yes!
Oh. My. Gosh. I am racking my brains to figure out how to put a full fledged glitter wall in our house. Even if it is just in a closet. Amazing! Maybe in my dream giant closet…Anyways, drool glitterfest over. How have you bedazzled your home? Please share all the sparkly details!
[…] is what I have been waiting for…desperately. Crystals in the Mego Cave. Oh behold the glitter infusion! When I was picking a light fixture to go over the dining room, I wanted to choose a chandelier […]ReplyCancel
Right now I am in the middle of a painting project that you will just have to wait until the reveal post to check it out, but it got me thinking about painting walls in general. Oddly enough, when I moved into our home, I have never really painted a wall. Yes, I think I had perhaps been to a painting party when I was younger, but I myself had never set out to paint an entire wall in my life. So really, when I began by painting our master bedroom, I just went for it with no other thought than, “It can’t be that hard.” And it wasn’t, but you definitely learn a few tips and tricks as you go along. Now, it is comical to think about that only a few years ago, painting walls was something foreign to me. I’ve painted almost every single wall (and some ceilings) in our house. So, from me to you, a few painting tricks that work for me. So maybe it will help you! And feel free to share your own, since we all have our own style.
Prep, prep, prep!
Clean all the surfaces: Get out that rag and wipe it all down. The base boards, the wall, the ceiling near the wall, and even the paint tray. It is amazing what can get stuck in paint.
Paint trim first: If you need to paint trim, I find it easier to paint first. It is less taping since you don’t have to worry about painting on the walls. It doesn’t matter if you do!
Spackle holes and sand: Make sure to take the time to cover all those holes you don’t need anymore. Then remember to sand them down lightly and clean up the mess. If you don’t, those holes are just magnified when the paint goes on.
Tape it all: Take time to paint everything you need all at once. I don’t like taping so something I slack and do a wall at a time. It is easier to do it all at once.
Unscrew everything you can. Just ask my painted door handles. Unscrew air vents, light switches, door knobs, etc. It is just much easier to unscrew things than to paint around them. Just look at some messy door knobs in my house.
Use a drop cloth. Also, have a damp rag on hand for those pesky little drops that may happen.
Take the time to move things and cover things. The part about painting that I hate the most is moving all the stuff out of the room and making your house look like a mess. But it is worth it to preserve your items. I learned that the hard way. All it takes is paint on one item for you to move everything out of the room from thereon.
The Painting Procedure
The edger tool saves my life. Some people use a brush but the edger tool enables me to love painting because cutting in makes me angry. You have to get the hang out of it, but once you do taping becomes minimal and you can fly across any straight edge. It seriously saves me some time.
Invest in a good angled brush. Edging makes me less angry with this tool. Sometimes a brush is the only instrument that can fit in tight corners. I have bought my fair share of cheap brushes where the bristles fall out and get stuck on your wall. More expensive brushes (I’m talking $5-$10 brushes) with an angled edge will pretty much provide you with the perfect brush 99% of the time.
Use enough paint. Get it on your roller. Not enough that it starts flying off of it, but there is nothing more frustrating than having to push down on that roller, trying to get paint off of it and onto the wall. So make sure to saturate the brush so you actually get paint on the wall.
Always do two coats. Everything is moved anyways. You might as well and the difference in the look is tremendous. I don’t think the paint and primer in one really works at all. You seem to always need two coats.
The Finishing Touches
Take painters tape off while paint is still wet. There are many blue edges stuck in paint around my house until I learned this trick. Visitors, thanks for ignoring them.
Allow time to dry. I get anxious to put the room back together but really, you need to wait until everything is dry to allow your job not to be spoiled.
Tell your spouse/roommate you painted things. I think Eric may have gotten a white hand print by accident. Then you both are mad. One of you has paint on your hand and the other has to repaint.
Make a system to keep your paint organized. Whatever system you have, make sure you note somewhere what color paint, brand, finish the paint is used in each room. I am working on making mine more systematic, but right now I just write on the paint can what room is painted what color.
Clean brushes and pans immediately. Soaking brushes in water for lengths of time causes rust and will ruin them. (Duh! But I did this). This will also help get as much paint off the brushes and rollers.
Throw away rollers and brushes semi-frequently. I try to make things last too long (aka I’m cheap). It compromises the job. Use quality products and know when they need to be let go.
So there are some painting tips and tricks that I have picked up along the way. Perhaps there are some new ones for you and will help you in your next painting job. Stay tuned to see what our newly painted walls!
Painting is one of our favourite quick decor fixes. It’s such a reliable way to personalise a home, to add character, sophistication and depth to a space. It is easy to buy paint and rollers and get colour up on the walls but it is important to only do so after doing your research. Nice blog!ReplyCancel
You got a little sneak peek of an artwork piece that I was working on last week, with my heart artwork post. And you didn’t even know that way back at Christmastime, you were also getting a sneak peek (okay, I didn’t know at that time either) with my reindeer glitter art. I have taken those two pieces of artwork and two others and made my first mini-gallery wall. Gallery walls are everywhere these days, coming in all shapes, sizes, colors, and combinations. I have my eye on various places in the house to make a few more, but I decided to start on a small scale with one narrow strip of wall in the Mego Cave.
This narrow strip of wall didn’t leave much room for large artwork or other installations. But when I made that glitter reindeer at Christmas, I knew he couldn’t only come out at Christmas. Every house needs a deer head, right? Well, only in my house it needed to be fake and glittery. I realized that the frame size fit perfectly in the narrow wall. With it being a $3 frame at Wal-Mart and a modern shape that I really like, I went back and picked up three more. Now, I just had to figure out how to fill them up! One was my glitter reindeer, another was the heart artwork, and I decided that a third would be the wedding caricature that Eric and I had done for our wedding RSVP card and the fourth would be a fun printable that I found. Here they are, waiting for their new home on the wall.
Sometimes I can get a little lazy when I hang pictures, eyeballing and not measuring. With a gallery wall I understood the need for symmetry and accuracy. So I rigged up a few placeholders to make sure I got all four lined up perfectly. First, I cut out templates from some old cereal boxes (Don’t you love when you can use items that are on their way to be recycled? That means these were cereal boxes, templates, and still on their way to be recycled)! I just traced around the frames on the boxes, cut them out, and marked a triangle where the hanger was on the back of the frame. Then I measured on the wall, deciding how spaced out I wanted to frames to be and making sure I got them centered.
Once I had them in the right place, I just put a nail through the triangle on the template. Once the nail was in, I pulled off the template and the pictures were ready to be hung.
I love the grouping! I wanted this little gallery wall to have handmade or really personal items on it, which I definitely think I succeeded at. The great thing about gallery walls is that if you ever get tired of what is in the frames, you can quickly change out what is inside each frame and get a completely new look. So this is how it will look for now, but you never know what switch-a-roos could happen in the future. Right now you can find me fondly staring at my new artwork!
They say normal is what you make it, right? Yet sometimes people tend to pop that normal bubble for you. For instance, the other day I was talking with some co-workers about my clothes rotation system. They all gave me the raised eyebrow look, wondering what in the world I was talking about. This has happened a few times in my life, and I have come to realize that this system is something that I made up. I have been doing it for what seems like forever and came into my life so naturally and organically, I can’t recall ever giving it much thought or making up the system. It’s just what I do. After I explained it to my co-workers, they really liked the idea. They have even commented on how nice my clothes always look. Perhaps there is something to this system, so I would like to share. This is definitely one post I never thought I would write. Here it goes!
Welcome to my closet. Well, actually I have two. This is my current wear closet.
This is my out of season closet.
Yup, I have too many clothes, and I am actually trying to pare down the clothes. If I don’t feel awesome in an outfit, why keep it? My reasoning is that I paid good money for it…but anyways, that is a post for another time.
Let me also show you my drawers…although not my drawers with um, my drawers in them. I am all for full disclosure, but really, that does not need to be on the internet, ever. So let me introduce you to my sock, jammy, and shirt drawers (and random DVDs?!).
The part that makes this system work out so well is that it is an organized space to begin with. This is how mine works for me, but you can organize it however you like.
Now commence the system. Let’s start in the closet. At the beginning of the week, I put together five outfits for the week, although sometimes those definitely change. It just takes less thinking in the morning, which is always good. I always pull from the front of the shirts and the front of the pants.
Why do I pull from the front? Because when I do laundry, the key to my system is to always put the freshly laundered clothes behind the ones already on the rack. This goes for drawers and closets. So really, my key to my clothes system is to always pull from the top and always put the freshly laundered clothes in the back. Why do I do this?
I can’t remember what I wore yesterday, let along a few days ago. This system allows me not to think. Since the clothes that I have worn recently are not at the front of the stack, I won’t make the mistake of wearing the same outfit in a week.
This also helps me evenly wear my clothes. It sounds odd, but I believe this system helps the longevity of my clothes. All socks are worn the same amount, all shirts, etc. There is an even wear pattern.
That’s really all there is to the system. Pull from the front, put away in the back, from socks to shirts, it’s the same system. That’s what I call the key to looking put together. Plus, organizing the closet and putting together outfits at the beginning of the week can help.
As for how I change my seasonal closet, there is no real system to that. I just swap out the closets when the weather changes. I basically have the spring/summer closet or the fall/winter, although there are always those pieces that overlap.
So that is my system. It really is quite simple but works really well for me. What about you? Do you have a system for your closet or are you more a grab and go person?
[…] Well, I had thought that I had covered almost every wall in the house of this point and was pretty much done with painting…until I decided to paint my closet in the Mego Cave. Now I am a huge fan of painting closets! Check out what the closet was looking like pre-painting and pre-organization (although you have seen it before in my closet organization and clothes rotation system): […]ReplyCancel
This is interesting. I’ve never thought about the rotation of my clothes. I do tend to wear things that are comfortable the best most, and save things I love because I don’t want to wear them out. ~JeanetteReplyCancel
I swear by my rotation system! It forces me to wear everything but also brings to the surface the clothes I don’t like as much. It also shows a pattern of clothes I buy but I don’t wear as much. It really helps you just get rid of stuff!ReplyCancel
This is such a smart system! I rotate my dishes to make sure each set wears evenly but haven’t thought to do the same thing with my clothes!ReplyCancel
[…] Painted the trim and walls […]
[…] Paint hallways and tan walls in living room. – ACCOMPLISHED – They look so fresh and clean. It’s great. Yet I’m already feeling the urge to repaint them… […]