Home Improvement, Interior Decorating, Paint

So fresh and so clean

Our master bedroom is the perfect display of what it means to be indecisive, something that has plagued me my entire life. Dramatic, yes. True, yes.

I remember waiting in line at the grocery store when I was little and my mom let my sisters and I each choose a candy bar. Well, I couldn’t decide on what to get, so I ended up getting nothing. That’s scarring for a small child, folks. Scarring!

Anyway, back to our bedroom. We wanted to paint most of the rooms in our house before we moved in three years ago (this march, holy smokes!).  I don’t think I’m ever as indecisive in life as when I have to choose a paint color for something. There are sooooo many choices. The master bedroom started off beige, and that was never going to work. The folks who updated our house before we bought it painted everything terrible, boring beige. It all had to go.

First, I bought teal. And I love teal. But it was sooooo bright for a bedroom, so that got nixed before I got farther than a sample coat. I ended up using the color in my craft room, which is in the basement with no windows and needed something super bright and cheery.

Second, gothic amethyst. I should have known from the start that a color with “gothic” in the name wasn’t going to work in my bedroom. It’s a gorgeous purple, and since we are Ravens fans I thought it was a color B could get behind. He liked it. I didn’t. I ended up using the color in my bathroom. I get so many compliments on this color in my bathroom, too! And my stepmom actually just took the remaining paint for the bottom half of her chair rail in my parents’ new house. It looks great, but I’m still glad it isn’t my bedroom color.

That’s the funny thing about me and color. It’s not that I don’t like the colors I choose. I do. It’s just that they don’t seem right for the space.

On to color three: darkish, bluish-gray. Ugh. This was the only color B and I seemed to agree on (he wanted hunter green….) for the bedroom. So I took it as a win that we painted another room in the house a shade of blue and we actually painted the room this time.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_bluegray

Well, this should come as no surprise…. I wasn’t ever super happy with this color. It was just. so. dark. and. gloomy. And I’m not a dark and gloomy kind of person. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. I love the brightness of white, but cannot stand the lack of color. So most every room in my house is a light, bright color of some sort.

So yeah, the blue/gray color didn’t work.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_bed before

I finally persuaded/annoyed Brian that I’d we’d be happier with a more cheery color, and after years of badgering he acquiesced.

So I wasted no time. I sampled five colors, thinking I wanted a bright neutral. But like I said before, the neutrals lack color (duh) and I seem to always end up not choosing a neutral no matter how hard I try.

So we ended up with Sherwin Williams Sea Salt, a beautiful, super light green that sometimes looks gray.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_In Progress

Here’s the room in progress. Don’t you love my style of painting? No tape, no drop cloth, no furniture removed? Hey, it works for me.

The other exciting thing I did in our room while doors were off closets and clothes were out – I painted our closets a bright white. Check this out:

Before

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_open closet

After

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_closet after

SO FRESH AND SO CLEAN! Minus the dirt in the corners… I painted the doors, the trim and the insides of both closets white and it made such a world of a difference. The whole space felt bright and airy. And clean. So very clean.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_Closet

Once the paint was dry and everything was put back together, I happily shopped at Target for a new duvet cover. I actually ended up keeping the old, dirty-looking duvet we had and simply buying a beautiful knit blanket for the top of the bed. I threw some matching pillows on the pull in the green and blue, added a pop of pink. And voila! Love it.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_pillows

The final step that I’ve done so far is to treat myself to a new bed. I looked for months on Craigslist and at Habitat Restore for a bed I liked, but I couldn’t find one. So I bought us a brand new bed online. It is so pretty 🙂

A Smith of All Trades_Bedroom_final1

There is still quite a few things I’d like to do in our room:

  • Iron the curtain I put up for Brian’s closet door. So doable, probably won’t ever happen since I hate ironing. Hey, just keepin’ it real.
  • Get taller night stands for next to the bed. The ones we have a so short it drives me a little nuts. But I haven’t found the right thing yet. Plus, I’d really like to redo these myself.
  • Get B a new dresser. His is old and clunky. And while I actually like the color against the Sea Salt walls, it is time for something a bit larger and more in-line with our style. I’m waiting to find something I can paint in the same color gray as my dresser.
  • Art for behind the bed. I’ve tossed up the idea of doing several gold mirrors or framing some botanical prints. I think this will have a huge visual impact when you walk into the room.
  • New duvet? I still might change up the bedding. I like the knit blanket a lot, but knit doesn’t hold up great. The problem is the dog gets on the bed, so we don’t want to splurge and buy really nice bedding on the off chance it gets dirty. Because it will get dirty.
  • Build a long, skinny console table for under our painting. It is lonely on that wall. Or do something completely different on that wall altogether. Only time will tell.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_another view

On the whole, I am loving the update to our room. B doesn’t seem to miss the blue, that’s a win in my book.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_final2

P.S. This is actually what our room looks like. Notice the stick of deodorant on B’s nightstand and Remmy’s oh-so-dirty doggy bed. And his sweet stick bone. You can also see the basket by my dresser to hold dirty towels to wipe Rem’s paws. The only thing I changed in here for a nicer photo was not adding our duvet under the blue blanket so it laid flat. Arguably I should have added it since the banket hangs over so long, but whatevs. Perfection is overrated.

Proof: Here is our duvet stuffed nicely into the hamper for this photo shoot hehe. Back on the bed it goes!

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_hamper shot

Other than that, this is it, baby. Far from perfect. Not even close to matchy matchy. But it’s ours and we love it.

OK, OK…. this is really what it looks like 😉

I couldn’t write a post about our bedroom without including Rem. It is his favorite room in the house, after all.

What do you think? Are you a fan or darker walls or do you like the light and brighter colors?

 

Home Improvement, Paint

Chevron Accent Wall

Last night I was beyond hyper and spontaneously decided to tackle my faux backsplash/accent wall in my laundry room. I think my spontaneity was key in the project, otherwise I would have over thought everything from the design to the colors.

I have seen so many designs online lately for accent walls: quatrefoil, shell, stripes, chevron… you name it, it’s been done. In my cracked out state, I went with a segmented chevron pattern and I LOVE IT. Also, it was way easy. Way.

I was too into groovin’ to my sweet tunes last night to take a ton of photos (imagine a quality mix of Bohemian rhapsody, Baby got back and Beloved)  but here’s the gist of what I did: I wanted the wall color to show through my pattern so it tied the accent wall into the rest of the space, so using 1″ tape I taped vertical stripes on my wall with no intention of filling them in. I spaced my lines out using a small level as my measurement. Honestly, I did this to avoid doing math. It’s about 9″ wide and was a perfect spacer. It also doubled as a level — go figure. I made sure my lines were pretty darn straight. They weren’t perfect, but they were mostly straight.

Then, I started to create my chevron pattern. I grabbed a pen and started marking my tape where other pieces of tape needed to intersect. Again, I used my level as a spacer. I placed it at the top of my cabinet and marked at the bottom, continuing until it wouldn’t fit anymore. I did this for all of the tape, then connected the dots.

Here’s a fun tip — if and when you run out of your painter’s tape, and if you just so happen to have masking tape or washi tape in the same width, you can use it as a substitute for painter’s tape. Yes, this happened. I was sad to paint over my mint tape, but didn’t want to lost my awesome energy and stamina with the project so I made the sacrifice.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up

With my pattern taped and ready to paint, I started to apply my paint colors: metallic gold (Thanks, Martha!) and ivory/manilla. I originally was going to do something with bolder pops of color, but went for the metallic paint as my bold choice. I also was going to add a third color, but my pattern only took up so much room and the third color probably wouldn’t have added anything to it.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up and painted

I painted two coats of each color onto the stripes before removing all of the tape.

*Drumroll*

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall

Love love love love love love love. Love. Had I thought this project out more, I probably would have gone with a mint or teal chevron stripe, but I am so glad I didn’t. I think the gold tones play off the countertop wonderfully, and make the gray cabinets pop even more.

I started this project after dinner at 5:30(ish) and was cleaning up at 7:30 p.m. — not to bad for the fabulous result!

BEFORE:

{A Smith of All Trades} Laundry Room

AFTER:{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall again

Life

Mmmmm… truffles!

My bestie just had surgery on her left hand to alleviate the pain she’s been experiencing for months from carpal tunnel. It went really well and she said that aside from surgery pain, her hand and wrist don’t hurt like they did before! Fantastic news.

She’s taking the month of July off from all things baking, including her yummy truffles. But, she did make a fantastic duo of truffles for the month of June.

Her Arnold Palmer Truffles were AH-MA-ZING — definitely one of my favorites so far. The dried lemon on top (maybe it’s candied? I don’t bake much haha) was a delicious addition to the truffle, which was marbled on the inside with a lemony chocolate and milk chocolate. YUMMO!

Her other truffle this month was a Pistachio Apricot Truffle. Also delish.

This one was dipped in dark chocolate. Instead of a pistachio or apricot flavoring, she chopped both ingredients for her truffles, giving the chocolate just a faint hint of the flavors.

Get better soon, Dana! Love you bestie.