Saturday, August 17, 2013

Sprucin' Up

From the first time we looked at our new home and knew that it was where we were destined to live, there have been some things that I've wanted to spruce up about the place to make it our own.  High on the list was replacing the three ceiling lights that were here.  The rest of the ceiling lights had been removed, so we replaced those the first day we moved in.  

Also on that list was painting the dining room and main floor bathroom.  There are other things on the list too, but this is what we have tackled recently.

Tackling these projects are not something that I take lightly or just to check off the box.  I ponder long and hard about the look that I want to go for and then I get it done.  In my head, the dining room has been through several versions of it's final product.  We did know that we wanted to use some of my photos on the wall, but which ones and what the color scheme would be were a mystery.  The biggest mystery was what kind of lighting we would use.

After months of searching, I found exactly what I wanted.  After months of waiting, it finally went on sale. You may recall the previous post where Keith and his brother gave us new light in the kitchen and dining room.

Finally, it was time to complete the room.  

The first step was to paint the dining room.  We went with a light shade of gray.  I was happy to say goodbye to the bright yellow.  I did consider trying to work with the yellow but at the end of the day, it just isn't my style.  So... be gone with bright yellow.

When Keith took this picture he said "You always take pictures of me working, so I thought I would take some of you".  What I thought in my  head was "Right now, I'm not really in the mood for a photo and I need to keep this in mind for when I'm taking photos of Keith working."

What was going on?  We learned from our inspector that to get a clean paint line, they use caulk on the edges.  This works like a dream, but it's a pain to apply.  It doesn't help that I forgot to use water, which helps the smoothing process and my glove kept ripping.  Ugh!  Then at the end, Keith remembered and it was much better.  However, at this time, I was 2/3 of the way through this process and I was wondering if I could live with yellow.  I was also wondering how people paint without taping everything off.  Clearly, I'm not that talented.

In the meantime, let me show you a picture of the new kitchen light.  
WE LOVE IT!!!

Back to the dining room.
The finished product is complete.
Oliver calls this the snow room.  Yes, the snowball appearing light fixture was 100% intentional.  The photos were taken with my Canon point-and-shoot camera last March while skiing at 49 Degrees North in Washington, the mountain that I learned to ski at.  Some were taken while riding on the chair lift and others were taken while skiing on the mountain.  The snow clings to the trees differently there than it does in Colorado.  They had just received 6" of new snow the day before and on this day, we had clear blue skies.  It was my perfect kind of ski day and we have images in our dining room to remind of us the great day that we had together.  





We painted the bathroom several months ago, but we just added the finishing touches.  We LOVED our beach vacation bathroom in our other house.  It was like a 3 minute vacation, several time a day.  However, the walls were bright turquoise and I thought that it was a bit much after a while, so we went a little less bright this time around.  We tested our skills on a dual color wall with the tape and caulk technique.  It worked quite well with Chocolate Brown on the bottom and powder blue on the top.  We love it!





Oliver will say, "we have a snow room and a beach room."
Next time you visit, we invite you to travel the world from snow capped mountains while we dine, a taste of Italy while we relax in our living room and a stop at the beach while you freshen up.  
It sounds like we need to take a vacation so that we can work on our Master Bedroom!

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