Family Room Redo

It all started with these famous words: Honeeeeeeeeeeey, I have an idea. Get the picture here? As I've said before I have hated this color on my walls since we moved in. Hubs says then why did you select this color and I reply because I was in a hurry and clueless (this will calm them down, puff up their chests and get the testosterone flowing when you freely admit you are "clueless"!). So now we've been going through the process of re-painting the rooms inside the house pink. A soft pink but very definitely pink. It's Home Depot's Behr paint called Cupid's Arrow. And I feel like I like in a cake box with white frosting or even a confectionery store because of the pink walls and white woodwork. I love it.

But anyway, we have the family room, master bedroom, laundry, master bath, hubs' office (which is actually one of the 4 bedrooms) and our walk-in closet. I took off the die cut wallpaper border in the laundry the other day so the painter could paint. I have 2 more rolls to go back up when he finished in there. He got the family room done in one afternoon. It looks great and wonderful! Here is a picture of what it looked like in our living room and dining room with all the "stuff" from family room spread about the house.

Here are pictures of the room just before and after we pushed the furniture back against the walls. I think I'll take my time re-hanging the pictures and stuff for the walls though. I was in such a hurry when we moved in and the few times I've changed things due to the new faux mantel focal point that I wasn't really happy with it.

How many times have I told you chicks that I "shop" in my own house many times? Hmmmm??? I have so much stuff that I don't "see" it sometimes. Well, I "rediscovered" a little vase with tulips IN it and ON it so I thought it would look much better than the OXO utensil holder in a romantic shabby rose cottage so I transferred the taller things to it. It's a bit tall but I'll make do until I find just the perfect utensil holder vase somewhere. This will necessitate a shopping trip I'm sure. :-) So here is the before and after for now. Looks like I'm going to need 2 utensil holders I think.

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The Pink Painted House

My greatest treasure is hubby. He gives me license to do as I darn well please. Whatever I want to do is just fine with him 99.9% of the time. Well, there is the occasional "I wish you wouldn't do that", but they are very few and very far between. When I said I wanted to paint the house pink, fine with him. So these are the first photos of the living room, kitchen and dining area for you to see.

I feel like I'm living in a confectionery store now. I absolutely love and adore it! How can a simple color make such a difference in a room and in a mood? Yesssss, it truly does. It just lifts my spirits up. As most of you know who've seen this blog before, I recently did my office/painting room and my sewing/craft room in a vibrant pink. This time for the main areas of the house I went a shade lighter. I did it this way.

A trip to Home Depot and looking at their samples got me thinking about a paler pink than the other two rooms simply because if I changed any furnishings in the living room it might be a tad hard to "coordinate" things with the wall color if it was too bright pink. So I picked a color I love, Behr's candy tuft, and had them make me up a quart with 1/2 the colorant in it. When I came home and painted it on several walls to test it, it seemed more lavender because the only colorant in it was magenta. Magenta has blueish tones to it. So I picked another color, Behr's cupid arrow. It had different colorants in it and after getting them to put in 1/2 the colorant again, that color seemed perfect after I came home and painted patches on different walls again and lived with it for a couple of days. The paint stores will do anything you want. You don't have to accept just their "colors." Then I bought 5 gallons to start the painting. It was definitely pink but not "in your face" pink, which I really like anyway, but wanted something softer in the main rooms and hallways.

Then there is the concern of getting the "pink" to show properly on different monitors. These past 3 weeks I've been on my laptop and notice huge differences between it and the desktop and huge monitor in my office. So I tried to pick settings that show it accurately. Impossible, chicks!! The closet I can describe it is "a tad more than light pink but definitely pink." I'm loving it.

I also decided that I had put too much stuff on the old beige-y walls to try and obliterate the color with the frou-frou, so this time I "scaled" down a bit - scaled down is a relative term here. I "reassigned" things to different places! ;-) Case in point - the living room. I brought the shutters I painted white from the dining area into the plant shelf in the living room. I like it much better here than in the dining area.

Notice the uncluttered look in that area now. Something here, just less "fluff" and the pink shows quite well. I brought in a picture that my brother and his wife gave me from the living room and put it on the right side of that entry.

I also brought the leather chair from the family room into the living room. It looks much better in there than in the shabby chic style family room. I prefer my living room a tad more formal than the family room.

The archway separating the living room and the dining area is only about 4" wide and being from California, I don't want anything up there that can kill me if it falls so I've had these little blocks of wood that I put little roses decals on and put the up there for a little bit of pizzazz.

Yesssssssss, the train limited edition prints still went up there to satisfy hubs but I put the pink suitcases back up there to "feminize" it a bit and only one suitcase did I leave in its original vintage state. But by the white door is probably the most accurate of the color of the walls I could get on THIS monitor. Yours will appear differently probably. That hallway on the left is still the beige-y color. The painter's wife went into labor and he had to leave! I'm soooo excited for them, but not sure when he'll be back to finish the hallways. You can see he prepped by putting up tape and can definitely see the color difference from the walls in the room to the wall on the other side of that archway.

Another view of the dining side of the archway and the wall to the right of that plant on the living room side is the wall in the hallway that still has the original color on it. See how much brighter and cleaner it looks. Squeeeeeeeeeal. I love it, chicks!!!

To be continued.................

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