Category: Our First House

Our first house, a 1960 ranch home.

Choosing Paint Colors

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Paint colors can be difficult to choose.  A lot of colors look great as paint chips, but not as great in mass quantity on a wall.  We have definitely had our share of colors that seem great, but are atrocious.  We have learned a few tips and tricks (some the hard way) about painting. 

A few months before Ben and I were married, I came out to Montana to visit.  During that visit, we started brainstorming ideas for the first few rooms we planned to finish.  We easily agreed to install white trim in every room.  Then, we chose paint colors, bought a few gallons and went back home.  We chose Ralph Lauren’s Riesling and Behr’s Squirrel.  I liked the airiness of Riesling and the moodiness of Squirrel.  Ben lovingly agreed.  We painted the first finished bedroom Riesling and loved it. 

Then we finished the guest room.  Then we repainted the living room.  When we finally got around to the master bedroom, the tone of the house had been set.  Dark, moody Squirrel was out.  It just didn’t fit.  I loved the color, but it didn’t work with the rest of the house.  We tried a lighter grey, but decided we needed a color that coördinated with the finished rooms. 

Moral of the Story: When choosing paint colors, first think about if the color will coördinate with other colors in your house. 

I am more drawn to colors on the cooler side of the color wheel, like greens, blues, and purples.  Red, orange, and yellow are on the warm side of the color wheel.  In my opinion, pale blues and pinks are by far the least forgiving.

Our master bedroom color scheme is green with pink accents.  When we finished our master bathroom, which is attached to our bedroom, I wanted to switch things up, but not too much.  Rather than green walls with pink accents, I wanted pink walls with green accents.  Well, I chose a light pink, got home and started painting.  Oops!  Definitely not a light pink.  More like bubblegum pink!  Needless to say, our bathroom did not stay pink.  Nope, it’s the same color as our bedroom. 

Moral of the Story: If you’re looking for a pale color, choose one that you like, then buy the lighter version.  Believe me, paint seems to get brighter when you start putting it on your walls.

By far, my favorite paint colors are from Restoration Hardware.  Saturated hues toned down with grey equals perfection in my book.  Thus, many of the colors in our house are Restoration Hardware colors, color matched at Wal-Mart.  Our main bathroom is RH Lilac:

The guest bedroom is painted RH Sea Green:

Our master bedroom and bathroom is RH Bay Laurel:

Our basement and dining room are mis-tinted versions of RH Silver Sage.

The basement bathroom is RH Sycamore Green:

Moral of the Story:  When you find something that works, stick with it.  I love that most of our colors are from the same line of paint, so everything is cohesive and goes well together.

We use satin finish paint in almost all our rooms, with the exception of the bathrooms, where we used semi gloss.  We chose these finishes for durability purposes.  Flat finishes do not stand up to the damage our two-year old doles out on a daily basis.

Dining Room: Updated

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Over the weekend, we decided to repaint our dining room, completing the transformation.  We used the same color as the basement, which extends up the staircase and is visible from the living room, dining room, and kitchen. 

I cleared the room and taped off the trim while Ben was at work.  After removing the curtains, I decided that I liked how open the window looked.  So, I took the outer curtain supports down, patched the holes and sanded it smooth. 

I don’t have much time to paint with a three-year old and four-month old.  Fortunately, Ben is a quick painter and the area is small.  It literally took about eighteen minutes to repaint.  Here he is, hard at work.

We had to do two coats.  One on Saturday afternoon.

And another on Sunday morning.

Ben hung the curtain brackets about 5 inches from where they were.  It’s really amazing how much more open the window seems now.  I love it.

I did love the old, dark blue color (Benjamin Moore’s Hale Navy), but this definitely fits in with the rest of the house.  The curtains are more fitting with the wall color, too.  Sure, the plates don’t pop as much against the new wall color, but the dark table top was just too dark with the old wall color. 

The room has come a long way in the past few years.  Now it’s exactly as I had imagined.  The plate rack is a nice feature, serving as art and storage. 

We have some touch up paint to do, especially on the white, but it’s good enough for now.  I’m a happy camper.  Touch up paint can wait.  Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? 

Here was the dining room as I received it, thanks to Ben’s decorating.

Then we added trim, a plate rack and repainted.  We also bought a new rug and I made curtains.  Then we had this:

We recently installed a new light fixture and Ben built an ah.maz.ing table for us, bringing us to this point:

And here we are today!

Do you have any projects to take on this weekend?

Dining Table Update

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You may recall that we’ve recently built a new dining table.   

After using it for a few weeks, I’m happy to report that it is still as fantastic as I hoped it would be.  Most visitors don’t believe it was a DIY project, either.  Score! 

We were a little hesitant to get a marble top because marble can stain easily, but we haven’t had any problems so far.  We actually poured a little grape juice on the sample and let it sit for a good 20 minutes.  Then we wiped it off and we couldn’t see a stain or any sort of discoloration.  A few coats of a nice quality wax will help prevent stains, too.

Our son also loves his new fort.  He couldn’t play under our old table due to the pedestal design.  Another benefit when dealing with small children: the steel was spray painted, so it will be super cheap and easy to touch up down the road.  Simply remove the top, haul the base outside and give the table a coat or two of plain ol’ spray paint.  Heck, we could change the color if we wanted to.

The World Market chairs we picked up are comfortable, too.  The size is perfect for our table.  I love the color and the slightly rustic finish is a great way to disguise future wear.  The stacking Target chairs are so convenient to carry up and down the stairs and are easy to store. 

When we planned to build a table, we knew we would not have the option to expand the table to add leaves, but most often, our old table was at the smallest size.  Over the weekend, we had several guests and missed the larger table.  Only for a minute, though.  This table looks so much better than our old table and all the options we could find locally.  We plan to buy a card table or two for future large gatherings. 

Overall, we love the table, chairs and usability of the set.  With that said, I’m curious to know what piece of furniture made your lives easier?

It’s the Little Things

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It’s the little things that will kill you… 

We’ve decided to tackle some of the small, daunting, and/or tedious projects that have been on our to do list for some time. 

First, we grouted our master bathtub seam to prevent leaks. 

We had used caulking, but everything peeled when we cleaned it, leaving an open area for water to trickle. 

Follow that up with some much needed cleaning.  Our bathroom fan was seriously gross, so Ben cleaned that.  Then we cleaned some of the hard to reach areas that never get dusted.

We also had some areas to fill in with landscaping rock, so when I was in Minnesota, Ben did some work. 

We decided to add rock along the south side of our backyard. 

What’s on your to do list?

Basement Progress: Man Cave

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When we posted about our basement living room aka the Man Cave, we were just getting the trim on the walls.  Well, we’re back to show the recent changes we’ve made to Ben’s favorite room in the house. 

After filling and sanding 1 million and 1 holes, taping and masking off areas, we were ready to start priming the walls, ceiling and trim.  We opted to use a paint sprayer to apply the primer because we had so much area and detail to cover.  After about four hours, we had the entire basement primed, looking like this:

This shot shows the small hallway and stairs. 

We waited 24 hours for the primer to dry and began spraying the ceiling with Glidden’s Bird Song.  Pass another 24 hour, then we taped the ceiling off to use the sprayer and painted our trim Behr’s Vermont Cream.  We removed the tape and HATED the ceiling color.  We decided to paint the ceiling Vermont Cream, too.  After three coats of white paint on the ceiling, crown mouldings, and trim, we were ready to add some color to the walls. 

I had planned to paint the basement living room Restoration Hardware’s Silver Sage, which is one shade lighter than our guest bedroom color.  We had the swatch color matched at Wal-Mart to order 5 gallons.  We started painting shortly upon returning home, but we had major clumps on in our paint.  It turns out, the bucket had been on the shelf past it’s prime, leaving a semi-dry paint clump in the bottom of our bucket.  We returned the paint and got individual gallons.  The paint assistant converted the 5 gallon formula to 1 gallon formula wrong, so the new paint color is in between Silver Sage and Sea Green. 

We were on a huge time crunch, with one week to finish before my due date, so we unpacked our rug and sectional.  This is what our Man Cave looks like today:

The sectional is so comfortable and it can seat a ton of guests.  We still need artwork, cabinet doors and storage, but it’s usable now.

Our 42 inch Insignia TV, which hails from Best Buy was a great buy-on sale because it is last year’s model.  Ben did some internet searching to find the star of the room, his Onkyo 9100 sound system.  He got a great deal because there is a small chip on the back of the subwoofer.  It still works perfectly, shaking the couch during loud action scenes of movies.  Of course, Ben loves it and shows it off to almost every visitor we have. 

We have some finishing to do, like build, prime and paint our sliding entertainment center doors to hide the ugly toys, add shelving and make some pretty storage for DVDs, but all in good time. 

I’m curious to know if we’re the only ones to tackle a project with a short deadline.  Tell me your project and what your deadline was.   The arrival of a guest?  Selling your home?  Or were you having a baby, like we were?