Fun with white paint

As you know I am a big fan of black paint. So far our headboard, the powder room vanity, the living room mirror, and (some of) the kitchen cabinets have been painted black. Well lately I've been on the opposite end of the spectrum and have been having fun with white paint.

It all started with this coffee table I found on Craigslist:



When I saw it I thought it would be perfect for the living room. I've always felt like that room could do with a bigger coffee table but every big one I saw was too pricey. Enter this huge, solid wood beauty with an even more beautiful price tag: $35!

The color wasn't great but that's what paint is for!

At first I thought I'd paint it black (surprise, surprise) but because its so big I was worried it would suck all the light out of the room. So I decided to go with white.



(The Trader Joe's daffodils are back - a bunch of 10 blooms for an unbelievable $1.29!)



(Once again all the animals felt the need to get in the picture. The only reason you don't see Zoey is because we didn't have her yet!)

I'm still getting used to having so much white in the room but I definitely like it!

I think I spent about $20 on supplies so I am pretty happy to have a huge 'new' coffee table for under $60!

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I was so happy with how the coffee table turned out I started thinking about other things I could paint white. The craft room is on my to-do list for later in the year and I've given myself a pretty small budget for it so I've been collecting used furniture to use in there. This thrift store chair has been sitting in the garage, patiently awaiting a makeover.

She started out like this:





Pretty ugly huh?

And after some spray paint, new foam and fabric, she now looks like this:



I seriously LOVE it!!!

I cant believe I almost left that ugly chair at the thrift store - isn't it amazing what paint and fabric can do?

I think my darling black paint has some competition :-)

Living Room

Considering this is the room you enter when you walk through the front door we probably should have tackled it first. Instead it became a temporary storage room, and was the last thing I wanted to see everyday when I walked into the house after a long day at work.

Here are some pics of the room when we first moved in (and before we started using it for storage!).

(Please excuse the squares I painted onto the wall - we were trying to decide between blue or green.)

I had been collecting things for the room so in April when Josh's dad and step mom came to visit we quickly moved all the boxes out and made a temporary set up with a few things we'd bought and some other things we had lying around.

Then at the end of May we finally started working on the room. The walls were dusty and dirty, the blinds weren't in the greatest shape, and there was that less-than-awesome entry light. We painted 2 walls and the ceiling a light, muted blue and the other 2 walls a slightly darker shade from the same paint swatch. I really hope we love the color for a looong time because painting those high walls and ceiling was brutal! Then we replaced the blinds and the light fixture.

After that I got started on the fun part. I was aiming for a bright and cheery room and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

We decided to leave the upper windows uncovered. I've noticed that some people in our neighborhood have blinds up there and others have used frosted window film but we like the light coming in. .

I still need to work on the staircase railings. They look white from far away but they are actually very dirty with tons of stains. I need to repaint all the white and also think of something to do with that oak - I am just not into the light wood look.

(That half wall going up the stairs looks white in the pic but its actually the same color as the other walls)

Then there was that long, tall wall opposite the sofa that needed something.

We decided some kind of organization system would be perfect because it could fill up some wall space and give us some storage space. We had a shelf from our old apartment that was just sitting in the garage unused so we made a quick trip to target for some storage baskets, mounted the shelf on the wall and ta-da!

I added a large collection of frames to take up even more of that wall space.

Zeke kept sneaking into the photos - he's such a camera hog!

You are probably thinking that having a white sofa is pure madness. That sofa used to have a beige slip cover and one day Hobbes expressed her anal glands on one of the cushions (yes, you really read that) and when we washed it it faded unevenly and never looked quite the same. My rational is that I can bleach the slip cover as many times as I need to and it will keep looking good. (I do have to vacuum it to remove cat hair fairly often though.)

I would say that 90% of the things in the room are from Target and Ikea and the rest are accessories and frames I've picked up at various places so it was a very affordable make-over.

I probably broke some decorating rule by having a cool color scheme in the living room and a warm color scheme in the family room right next to it but I don't care!

We really love it!!!

Pillows and pets

This morning I finished making throw pillows out of this fabric that I'm kind of in love with ...

I bought it a couple of months ago because I loved the color and pattern but I wasn't sure what to make with it. A few weeks ago I found a super cheap green rug at Ikea for for the living room so I decided to make the fabric into throw pillows for the sofa to bring in some more green. Yay!

Not 30 minutes after I placed the new pillows on the sofa where did I find our animal family?

Of course they weren't on the brown (a great color for hiding pet hair) sofa in the family room. Nope, they were chilling on the white (a perfect color for showing pet hair) sofa in the living room, enjoying the new pillows. Thank goodness for slipcovers and bleach!

Mirror, mirror

Last weekend I had great luck at Home Goods. I've been looking for a large black mirror to go above the sofa in the living room but I've been having no luck. (Probably because I'm always looking for a major deal!)

Well at the very back of a stack of mirrors I found this blue one that is the perfect size AND marked down. Score! I didn't measure it exactly but its about 40" x 30".

(Zeke approves)

It has a wood frame so its easily paintable, and I had black paint leftover from when we made our headboard.

First a light sanding and a coat of tinted primer.

Then 3 coats of black semi-gloss paint.

Not bad for $36 + tax!

I still have to make throw pillows, finish the art/photo wall, and install the new light fixture and then I can check this room off my list. Yay for progress!!

More painting

On Monday when everyone in our neighborhood was barbecuing in their back yards we thought it would be more fun to start painting our living room. I've been wanting to do it for months but we've been putting it off because of the high ceilings. We didn't make a whole lot of progress but it feels good to have started.

(We try to paint in really stylish outfits ...)

As usual Monkey and Hobbes lazed around and got in the way ...


BTW ... yes, we will be replacing that light by the front door (I know you were wondering).