Sharpredpencil’s Weblog

The dining room is painted; we’re planning on painting the kitchen this weekend. I want to hold off on posting pics of the rooms until they’re more or less finished. I decided a moodboard would be a fun way to show our progress! Here’s a reminder of what the paint color looks like (it’s growing on me, and I call it Granny Smith Apple even though Valspar calls it Bella Mint):

Now, for the fun part. I created this moodboard on www.mydeco.com. I was a moodboard virgin, so this took some work, but I think I’ve got it. The furniture pictured is actual furniture we either already have, will be delivered soon, or will be purchased at some point. The light fixture is the real deal! I found it online and it is my pride and joy. It makes me happy. It will take awhile to arrive because the company makes each fixture to order, but it will be so worth it. The accessories shown are just ideas. The drapes shown are really in white and fabric shown is a possibility for the kitchen window valence. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

Well, shoot. Now I realize the moodboard is too small to see anything very well, but I can’t figure out how to make the file bigger.

I’ve been terrible at grabbing before pictures of our rooms, but let’s face it: Every room is white, white, white before we paint it. I figure those are not very interesting pictures. This picture of the dining room is the color we decided against. It’s a pretty color, but it’s too much with the red in the living room and the two rooms are adjacent enough to make us worry about the whole thing being too in-your-face. Plus, finding a color for the kitchen that we both like and fits with the teal is hard. Really hard. We’re repainting the dining room this weekend and plan on painting the kitchen the same color (that’s for another weekend, though).

Before we cover this color up, though, here’s it’s debut on Sharpredpencil:

This is the color we’re planning on for the kitchen and dining room.

I’m just popping in to discuss our decorating progress. Sorry, no pics today, but I’ll post some soon.

We painted the dining room a sorta-teal color. Not sure about it. We both like it in the evening light, but aren’t crazy about it during the morning and daytime light. It’s weird. We have no idea what we’ll switch it to, though, so it might just stay for the time being.

I tracked down a local foam store and ordered a custom-cut piece of foam for the living room bench. I bought the fabric last night and hope to sew the cover tomorrow night. My mom is coming for a visit, so I’m looking forward to some mother-daughter wine and sewing time.

We bought a table for our kitchen breakfast nook. It’s so lovely. Once painted, the kitchen will look a whole lot more put together. We’re watching our dining room set like a hawk. We’re giving it a month or so to go on sale, and if it doesn’t, we’ll buy it by Labor Day. Although, we may break down and buy it earlier because it’s so hard to walk into the furniture store and get grilled and followed by the sales staff every. single. time. I’m so over that. It almost makes me want to go elsewhere for the dining room set. Almost.

In my last post, check out the second living room picture. See that white door? It’s the half bath, and we have no clue what to paint it. We originally planned to paint it red, but that was before our spur-of-the-moment decision to paint the accent wall in the living room red. It would be too much to paint the half bath red, wouldn’t it?

We thought a cool burnt gold/orange/yellow color might be cool, but now I don’t think I like that idea so much. Any thoughts? Inspiration? Leave comments to point me in a direction, readers! Thanks in advance.

I found these two ideas on www.thenest.com.

To do this, stretch fabric over some wooden frames. Use a staple gun to secure fabric to the backs of the frames. I like the look of this for the master bedroom, once we decide on a color scheme. I love the three blocks of a neutral color and the one block of a vibrant color.

Here are pieces of fabric or paper framed and propped against the wall. I can see this in our entryway, where I’ll put a table against the wall and hang a mirror. I’ve been struggling coming up with ideas for accessories to put on the table, and I think this would work well.

Both of these options sound quick and inexpensive: My two favorite adjectives when it comes to decorating.

We’ve decided to cope with our sadness by painting. Yay! We’re finally making some decisions on paint colors. The living room should be finished tonight. We started the project over the weekend and very spontaneously decided to do accents walls. Yes, plural. I’ll point out the specifics when I post the final pictures, but we got the planned accent walls done late Sunday night and decided it was too much. We spent last night priming and painting one wall and are so glad we did. I have words of wisdom, people. Are you ready?

Primer is a marriage saver.

That’s right. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re dying to slap a bold color on the wall and the man at Lowe’s recommends primer, heed his advice. Especially with red. We would have died of annoyance had we not used primer. However, don’t always believe Lowe’s Man when he says it’s not necessary to spend a lot of time worrying about getting good coverage with the primer or edging the trimwork or cutting in. Edge the trim and cut in. You’ll save yourself a major headache.

Pics to come soon!