So, there has been some action going on in our living/dining/foyer area lately. You know, just a few little splashes of paint here and there. What started as a dining room makeover and then turned into a foyer makeover has become a whole first floor minus the kitchen makeover. There are so many things to do here that my scatter brain just happily jumps from one project to the next without any clear focus. Whatever feels right is next on the list. Right now I am trying to get all the painting projects done before winter comes and takes away the ability to air out the house without freezing to death.

Updates from the foyer are coming as soon as I finish painting the trim and front door white. But in the meantime let’s switch back to the dining room.

Remember how I got all scared by the boards and batten idea that I would love for the dining room walls? Well, I finally found a good excuse to delay this project indefinitely until we put new floors in our house one day in the distant future. When we install new floors we will have to put up new baseboard anyway, so why go through the trouble installing all these boards now? Exactly! So for now we are keeping the chair rail, will paint the bottom half white, and are adding some color to the top half. And here is where it becomes tricky.

The foyer was already painted a muted dark teal that we love and want to keep. The kitchen is sporting a muted olive green. So the dining room that sits in between those to rooms has to match both colors. So far it has accomplished that by wearing the same neutral light grey as our living room. But we wanted it to stand out as a separate room a little more. However, since the rooms are all well connected, they still have to connect visually somehow. But no more green! Phew, what to do? We were thinking somewhere in the blueish area, muted of course and maybe with a tiny hint of purple in it. Like the clouds on a rainy day. And the sky of the painting in our living room. Read from left – foyer, dining room, kitchen:

So we picked up a bunch of paint chips in that color range and after looking at them for a few weeks in all different lighting situations, we narrowed it down to just a few candidates.

The final winner was “Misty Morning Dew” from Valspar. It had that perfect balance between blue, grey, and purple. Or so it seemed. Because once that baby went up on the entire wall it looked purrrrple like no tomorrow. I can’t say that we didn’t try to let it grow on us or even fall in love with it. But it just didn’t happen. Can’t force love where there is none. The purple was just a tiny bit too funky for us quiet people. So it had to go. (Notice how we turned the table 90 degrees? Not completely decided on the orientation yet, but it definitely opens up a lot more space in the center of the house. The downside is that you have to squeeze your way a bit to the chairs behind the table.)

Well, we didn’t quite feel like buying another bucket of paint either, so I consulted the 15+ paint leftovers in the basement for a solution. Did you know that paint is still in usable condition after 3 years? The only problem is that the can starts to rust and crumble into the paint at some point. Anyway, these were my candidates for a happy mixer event: A pale green, a medium muted teal, and our unloved periwinkle grey.

Together they made this beautiful ice-blue that is now just waiting for the bottom half and the trim to put on a crisp white. More/better pictures to come soon after the trim is finished.

Fits in a little better with the other two colors anyway:

What do you think? Improvement or not? Would you have been daring enough to go with the purplish color? Have you ever experienced a color looking completely different on the wall than on the sample? What did you do about it? Live with it or paint it over?

According to my husband any news is only official when posted on Facebook. But I will post an exclusive piece of information right here before the Facebook world will know: Milo is taking his first steps!!! As soon as possible I will snap a video and post it here, but currently I still need both hands to catch him when he stumbles towards me. This little boy is almost a wobbly toddler now and is busy putting pieces and bits together every day to figure out the world and become a fully functional human being. First he learned to climb up the steps, now he can get down. First he figured out how to take things apart, now he is starting to put things together.

It’s just one more month until Milo’s first birthday and time for my little boy to get a big boy’s room. Yayyy for another room makeover in this house!! Here is what Milo’s room looked like when he was just a tiny 6 month old baby: (more…)

Here is the new theme that I have chosen for our website. I called it Vintage Summer. Don’t the colors totally remind you of a slightly aged photo of a summer picnic out in nature by a wheat field? And ta-da – it does have orange in it. We’ll see how it turns out. Still working on the background of the page and how to incorporate some more of the red tones.

 Loading ...

Someone just accidentally deleted the title of our website and somebody else will have to fix it when he gets a chance. This html thing is a mystery sometimes. But the orange sidebar just had to go.

Orange and me – I don’t think we are ever gonna be friends. I have tried so many different shades of it, but it just keeps reminding me of the trash trucks in Germany. So, it was time for a color change on our website. Right now I’m just playing around a little with different shades of green and blue. They are kind of reflecting what’s going on on our walls right now and what the dining room will be soon. Have I ever mentioned that I am a color geek? That person standing in front of the paint chip collection at Home Depot, comparing 20 different shades of blues for hours – yep, that’s me. If I had unlimited amounts of time, I would probably make a trip to the paint color dream land every week and soon run out of walls to paint. In the meantime I am just collecting a significant amount of paint chips in my desk and dreaming of time for endless painting to magically appear.

Check out this cool tool if you need inspiration for color combinations for graphic stuff, home decor, or just to get a kick out of looking at colors: http://kuler.adobe.com

Update:

Obviously, everythings been fixed and improved. Do you like it the changes?