Starting the Living Room Project

Now that the Master Bedroom Project is completed, 

we've moved on and are starting the living room redecorating project 

{actually I shouldn't call it RE-decorating when it was never decorated to begin with!}.

As I said in my Virtual Living Room Makeover post,
our living room is the first room you see when you walk in our front door
and it's high time that it got some love.

Here is my vision for the room...

Here's what the living room looked like before we started the project...

First step = painting the walls.

A few months ago when I started hoarding collecting Sherwin Williams' paint samples

to make my own paint fan deck, I immediately fell in love with Sea Salt.

It looked like the perfect mix of gray and light blue.

Just to be sure I liked it in our living room, 

I got a sample pint of it and did some patch testing on different spots throughout the room.

Sadly, this made me fall out of love with Sea Salt.

It just looked too baby blue on our walls.

So I headed back to Sherwin Williams and got a sample pint of Comfort Gray, 

my second favorite paint color.

 Again, I painted splotches all over our walls and decided that although I loved the color,

it was just too dark for the room.

So back it was to Sherwin Williams for the third time.

I explained my problem to the paint guy and 

we started messing around with the tint of Comfort Gray until I was happy with it.

We ended up cutting the tint by 35%, 

which means the color stayed the same, it just lightened up a little bit.

It was love at first sight.

Not too light, not too dark, a perfect mix of blue and gray and not the slightest hint of baby blue.

Once the paint decision was made and the paint was bought, 

we had to figure out which walls to paint.

{excuse the mess of toys. our formal dining room is currently serving as the kids' playroom.}

There are several issues that make painting rooms in our house rather difficult.

First off, all of our walls have rounded corners, which makes in hard to find stopping/starting points for adding color to our walls.

Second, our house has an open concept floor plan, which means one room blends into another without any real definition of separate spaces. 

Oh and the shared ceiling in our foyer/living room/dining room is 17 feet high at its' peak!

I knew I wanted to paint the main wall with the fireplace. 

I wasn't so sure about the other walls.

But once we painted the main wall, it looked like the room was closing in on you,

like the wall was coming at you. 

To remedy that, we painted the big wall with the window in the dining room to anchor the main wall.

I didn't dare do the other walls for fear of ending up having to paint the whole house!

 

{yeah I know, that play room is a real mess!}

We only ended up painting the two walls, but who knows, maybe we'll end up painting more!

But for now, I am really happy with how it looks.

So my advice to those of you who have open concept floor plan homes and want to add color, but are scared for fear of not knowing where to start/stop is this:

Pick a color you love {test it out first} and start by painting ONE wall. 

If you like it, stop. 

If it looks weird, paint another wall. 

Keep going until you are satisfied with how it looks.

If you have rounded corners like we do, here is a good website that explains where to stop/start your paint:

How to Join Two Paint Colors While Painting Rounded Corners

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I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

We'll be out playing in the snow - yippee!!

P.S. I'm joining these parties this weekend:

Fingerprints on the Fridge FYF 

Funky Junk Interiors SNS #70

Just a Girl SAS

If you live in the Pacific NW...

Come Junk With Us is sponsoring 

Ruffles and Rust {a vintage market to inspire}

this Friday and Saturday

at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, WA.

That's only 10 minutes from my house - WU HOO!

From what I gather, it's an antique & craft show meant just for us junk lovers.

I'm looking forward to gathering inspiration, meeting other bloggers and making some new local  junkin' friends!

Here's a coupon for $3.00 off admission for those of you who are interested....

Hope to see you there!!!

~Erin~

Drop Cloth Drapes Gone Bad and the Quest for Stripes

I was so excited when I jumped on the "Dropcloth Drapes" bandwagon a while back.

I mean, who wouldn't be excited about LONG drape panels for less than $20!?

And they were cute too.

But notice I said they were cute?

Nine months later, they are not so cute and I am not so excited about them.

These drop cloth drapes cover our sliding door that sits next to our kitchen table. 

The table where my toddlers eat all of their meals.

And throw all of their food on the floor.

Food that splatters onto the walls, the sliding door, and all over the drapes.

No biggie though, the drapes are washable.

Right??

Not such a good idea if you didn't pre-wash them before hemming them.

Why??

Because they SHRINK and you are left with high-water drapes!!!

I hate high-waters.

Total rookie mistake. Duh!

Also my wonderful hemming job turned into a knotted up mess of dangling strings.

So not cute.

So needless to say, we need new drapes now.

I could just replace them with new drop cloths (but pre-wash them this time!),

but after looking at those drapes for months now,

I've decided that they just look too blah against our tan walls.

Too much tan on tan action, if ya know what I mean.

We need something with a little more personality.

I am so in love with horizontally striped drapes that I've seen on a few blogs.

The Yellow Cape Cod

used plain ivory curtains and attached strips of black twill fabric with fusible webbing. 

The raw edges were covered with black grosgrain ribbon. 

Nesting Place 

found vertically striped fabric, and turned it into super cute horizontally striped drapes.

 Faith's Place 

used leftover paint from the walls and painted stripes on plain white curtains panels.

I haven't been able to find wide striped fabric that I like (or that's affordable) 

and so I thought I'd give the painted stripes method a try.

Using my old, shrunken drop cloth drapes for a trial run, 

I painted wide 8" stripes using leftover paint from our walls.

(Keep in mind this was a trial run, so I didn't do the best paint job)

While it looks really cute from far away, up close it's not so cute.

It is way crusty and stiff.

If you crease it, the paint cracks too.

And I'm pretty sure it wouldn't hold up in the washing machine.

Bummer.

While the painting trail wasn't so successful, 

it did show me that the stripes look really good in our kitchen/breakfast area, 

so I am definitely going to persevere in my quest for striped drapes!

I bought these puppies at Ikea (only $20 for a super long pair!) last weekend 

and I'm thinking I'll try attaching fabric stripes...

if I can find the right material...

Valentine's Day Ideas

I'm not a big "decorate the whole house for every holiday" kinda girl, 

but I do like to have a few little touches of festive-ness sprinkled around the house.

I didn't really have any Valentine's Day decorations,

so I set out on a quest to find some fun DIY Valentine projects to spruce up the house this year.

I also wanted to find some fun ideas for the kids...

they are still a little too young to really "get" Valentine's Day,

but they do notice fun decorations around the house,

they LOVE treats (what kid doesn't!?),

and they really enjoy doing little art projects.

So here is what my quest led me to...

Scrap Fabric Heart Wreath from Little Birdie Secrets

I actually ended up making one of these myself for our front door...

 I had to make mine pink though so it didn't blend in with our red front door :)

Aren't these Valentine Chair Backers from Our Scoop the cutest!?
I am so making these...someday :)

I fell in love with this

Heart Punch Valentine's Day Art from Cozy.Cottage.Cute

and I totally copied it.

Here's my version...

Valentine Scrabble Art from 320 Sycamore 
and a cute Valentine vignette using more Scrabble letters...

White Chocolate Cherry Shortbread cookies from BHG 

My sister-in-law made these at Christmas and they are to die for - SO delicious!

Valentine Subway Art (free printables!) from Eighteen25

Heart Suckers from The Idea Room (also featured in February's Family Fun magazine)

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And after finding all of these fun ideas on the web, 

my creative juices started flowing and I was inspired to make a few

more fun ideas that I came up with myself...

I had the kids make handprint hearts that I hung in a frame.

I also grabbed some branches out of the backyard 

and hot glued some little pink cherry blossoms onto them.

I stuck the branches into a cute metal bucket I found at a local boutique.

 It reads,

having someone to love is family

having somewhere to go is home

having both is a blessing.

I hope you have a Happy Valentine's Day 

and are inspired to create some festive-ness for your own home :)

Hanging Shells and Oars on the Wall

After I posted about our Master Bedroom Redo, 

I had several people ask how I hung the oars 

and shells on the wall.

For the oars, we screwed two short screws 

(make sure they are short so they don't poke through the other side of your oar!) 

in each end of the oar and then wrapped some wire around each screw. 

This was our make-shift way of making hooks.

Then we screwed some long screws into the wall and attached our "hooks" to the wall screws.

As for the shells, we used very thin nails and simply nailed through the natural holes in the sand dollars.

Jacob held the shells in place awhile I very carefully nailed my little nails through the holes.

For the starfish, I used the same little nails and nailed two nails under the "arms" of the starfish.

The starfish on a rope were actually purchased at TJMaxx a while back. 

They were sitting on a random shelf in a tangled up mess.

The white finger starfish immediately caught my eye, 

so I de-tangled it and snatched it up.

I think it would be pretty easy to replicate though...

Get 5 white finger starfish in varying sizes. 

Drill a tiny hold in the top of each one. 

Attach string through the hole and tie to a long piece of rope.

And there you go!

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Hopefully that answers some questions!

If not, shoot me an email at jezacharda@yahoo.com and I'd be happy to help :)