dining room before & after

Okay! After a "long and grueling" process comprised mostly of me finally just rebooting my iPhoto.....my before & after pics finally showed up! Here are some before shots:

Sans furniture:



Looking from dining room into our living room:

We were thinking that since we have our cute little chair rail that we might try doing a different color on top and on bottom - LOOK OUT - we're crazy! Who knows what we'll do next! We had been on such a roll with the den and the kitchen and wanted to get our paint on again while we were in the zone, so we picked our colors and I went to the store one glorious Saturday. I wanted the top color in the dining room to be the same color we will end up using in our bedroom - a light gray leaning more towards the blue end of the spectrum than the brown. Since this is a dining room where food will be eaten (and occasionally thrown), I was thinking that it might be a good idea to get a satin finish for that room rather than flat like we'd done in the other two rooms. This is what I call Mistake #2. Mistake #1 was my overconfidence in my new abundance of painting experience (one large wall) to the extent that I didn't think I needed to tape the floor boards or chair rail. I love those new edgers, but in my experience they do NOT eliminate the need for tape if you want to do the most clean paint job you can. NOTED!

I started with the bottom, darker section of the dining room first (dark gray), and I notice as I'm going along doing the edging that 1) Man it probably would have been a good idea to tape, and 2) this paint isn't drying as seamlessly and magnificently as the other rooms we did. Hmm....and it looks a little shinier than I imagined....Hmm. NOT COOL. I went ahead and finished the bottom section, Kevin came home and lovingly confirmed my suspicions. It was looking like crap. So before we proceed, Kevin patiently and manly-ly (shh) taped off all the top section and we decided to do the top using the flat gallon we'd purchased for our bedroom and just exchange the satin gallon for another flat version since we hadn't opened it.

NOTE: Sherwin Williams has great paint, and I'd been able to get all the paint we've used thus far at deep discounts, but they have really inconvenient hours and a horrible return policy - in that they won't do it if they've colored the paint. While I'm really glad to know that if I happen to buy 10 gallons of UNcolored paint I can return it no problem (???), it was irritating that we had to wait two more days to go and talk to a manager before finally getting an exchange. I think we'll be Home Depot paint customers from now on.

We also bought a flat half gallon of the same paint color we'd used on the bottom, so we could sand and paint back over it. What we thought would be a one day job turned into four, but at long last we finished!! Here are some after pics:




And with a little floral styling:

We still need to put more stuff up on the walls, but I already think the house is looking so much cooler and so much more "us" with all this paint! Who knew!

I'll make sure to take more "during" pics when we do our bedroom! PAINT!

Paint Colors:
Below Chair Rail - SW Wall Street
Above Chair Rail - SW Evening Shadow

more before and after coming soon!

We just finished painting our dining room yesterday (with a couple minor flubs along the way that extended the process). HUZZAH! I have to get the right lighting to take an after picture this evening with my good camera and I'll post for you to see! For now, I'll leave you with this lo-res before picture from my phone:


I have a better before with my "good" camera as well, but hopefully this subpar shot will leave you wanting more....right? RIGHT?!

Stand by for full post with good pics and details on our little mishaps....

paint crazy

Recently having been inspired by several friends as well as Apartment Therapy, we decided to start painting the interior of our house, one room at a time. Sherwin Williams was having a big 40% off sale last weekend, so I figured then was as good a time as any to get started.

The house we just purchased was a flip by the realtor who sold it to us, so originally we thought we wouldn't need to paint until the walls got dingy because they looked so nice and new. Once we started decorating, however, I quickly realized that if your walls are painted, you don't need as much decor on the walls to make it feel decorated, and less decor = less work. Nevermind the fact that we still have thousands of things to put up on the walls...

I decided to start looking at Sherwin Williams' paint colors online, which really is of no real value other than getting me pumped up about painting, only because the colors on your screen are not the same as the colors you actually get in the store - just go to the store! They're everywhere! I went to SW last Saturday and literally sat in the store staring at paint samples with a blank look on my face for an hour and a half! Staring! The only thing that kept me from feeling too self conscious about it was hoping that I'm not the only one that is so indecisive about choosing colors. The guy who checked me out at the end confirmed my suspicion, when in an effort to make myself feel less creepy, I asked him if there were others out there like me. Shwew! Not creepy, just meticulous. Or at least that's what I kept silently telling myself.

I finally chose my colors (one for the den and one for the kitchen) and pick up a few supplies since all their paint supplies were 35% off, and I headed home to begin the transformation of our lovely little home.

Kevin knew that I was purchasing paint, but what he did not know was that I was planning to surprise him by having the den painted by the time he got home that evening. Our den is the product of a garage conversion, and it's probably our favorite room in the house. It's huge, so we decided on just doing an accent wall and go from there. I picked a deep brown - much darker than Kevin and I had originally agreed upon (zoinks!) so I was hoping he'd like it...

Here is a semi-before picture (pardon the mess, I had to shove all the furniture around to make room for the tarp and such):

I had already started edging when I thought to take a picture...

Here is an after picture (note: furniture still not back in place because I had to wait for Kevin to help me move it - the tv is a giant dinosaur of a thing on top of that heavy piece of furniture and while I managed to ooch it out from the wall, I couldn't get it back):

This picture doesn't really do it justice. It looks BEAUTIFUL! I want to be in that room all the time! Especially now that we have the furniture moved back in place.

I strategically left the house when I knew Kevin would be getting home because I wanted to see if he would call me or wait until I got back - a good gauge for his level of thrilledness (shhh). Sure enough, he called me while I was picking up some food for us and left this message:

"BAAABE! IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!!! I LOVE YOU! I'M CALLING YOU BACK RIGHT NOW!"

I wish I could attach audio because it is a hilariously adorable message!

Then on Monday, Kevin decided to tackle the kitchen by his lonesome while I was at work. He did a glorious job in a room with many more corners and crevices than I had to deal with. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product:




I LOVE IT!!! The paint is completely changing the feel of the house and giving it so much more character!!

Last night, after I got home to witness Kevin's glorious adventure in painting, we decided to go to Garland Road Thrift to look for frames and to see if we could find any cool chairs to use as extra dining room chairs for when we have people over. Instead we found this:


I instantly fell in love and it was FOURTEEN DOLLARS. That's it!! I instantly knew where I wanted to put it in our house and I remembered that we had some leftover paint from a previous project a while back, and soon enough, we were leaving the store with it, a frame and several National Geographic Magazines from the 70s.

We got home, got to sanding, and before the night was through, we had this refurbed (new word, get over it) beauty:


I think it looks exactly like I hoped and I love the way it looks up against the new chocolate wall in our den!

It feels so good to see the house really coming together! I think next up is picking the perfect gray color for our bedroom...