First of all, let me say that this blogger is making me irate because I started typing and when I went to add a picture, it decided nope, I'm just going to make your computer freeze and not let you do anything each time you click on this logo. Perhaps they are working on something? Anyways, I'm going to continue to write this and add in pictures as soon as it lets me..
Before the new year begins, I figured I should at least update this at least once. To be completely honest, I have been becoming so drained from my job it makes it hard to motivate myself on doing anything around the house. I know it's not an excuse to slack off on the home improvement area ( not that I gain or lose anything from not doing anything), but sometimes making changes to your surroundings improves your mood and makes you motivated to continue onto other projects around the house.
We wanted to start off slow and ease our way into putting our own personal touches on the house. The dining room seemed to be the way to go. Why? Well, because we have never had a dining room therefore, we had no furniture making it just easier to work on.
After you have decided on what room you want to give a facelift to, you need to decide on what color you would like. If you have no idea or are completely new to the world of painting, an easy thing to do is to go to Google and type in "dining room" or whichever room you are interested in. You will get a wide variety of images at the tips of your fingers.
This is what we wanted to do:
Go to Lowe's or home depot and spend the 2 bucks on color samples. Believe you me, the colors on those swatches are almost never ever even barely remotely close to the actual samples you paint on the wall. Take for example, the following pictures followed by links to the swatches and judge for yourselves.
Left: Behr: Oriental Eggplant
Middle: Martha Stewart: Eggplant
Right: Behr: Deep Aubergine
On the left is Valspar: Purple Prickly-Pear:
On the Right is Martha Stewart: Eggplant:
After playing around with the two colors that we thought we would use, we thought that both hues of purple would darken the room. We decided we would like to use a lighter cream color on the bottom and add in chair rail. These colors remind me of Monet's use of color in his water lily paintings which I absolutely loooove.
The ceiling also had to be repainted. I chose a very light color, it was almost white with a splash of purple in it. By doing this, it seems that the light reflects better in a way that makes the room look lighter than it really is.
That ugly plastic stained glass looking light fixture? Gone! And replaced with a much more modern brushed metal fixture.
I got the curtains from Bed Bath and Beyond on clearance for 50 bucks (originally $50 for each panel). The curtain rods are from hobby lobby. They were $25 total.
The final step will be to install crown molding. Unfortunately, the hubby's truck needs a new starter and is stuck in the garage so that is going to be put on hold for now.
