Before & After Master Bathroom Painting

So our master bathroom was in some serious need of some TLC!

The towel rod was in the middle of this wall

& when we were moving in it was hanging off on one side and had ripped out part of the wall.

My husband patched it up as you can see in the picture.

The tile isn't straight along the tub due to a really poor tub installation job and has always bothered us.... along with grout all over the wall. We have debated on ways to make this not so noticeable such as trim it off with a small trim, but we decided to paint it and see what it did... I didn't take very good pictures so you can't see how bad it really is...

But here is the after picture.... once again, you can't really see it but it is amazing what the world of difference the paint made.

Here is our "Water Closet". I bought these wreaths for my last house for about $2.50 each and I really like them in here....

But now I love the color in here also.

The color in all of the pictures are looking a bit more orange than it really is. The color is a bit more caramely in person.

We had a towel ring holder here that also ripped out of the wall and my husband had to fix it.

Here is the wall painted.....

And here the towel ring is hung and functional once again.

Excuse the mess as I was just starting to pull everything up and start taping.... (my husband is more embarassed about the mess than I am.... who are we kidding if you let everyone think that our house is spotless all the time!)

Here it is clean and painted! AAAHHH!!! So much nicer!

This kind of shows the crappy grout and tile job...

And in the next picture, the paint pretty much hides all of that!

I am so happy that this is done so that I can enjoy this room once I have my little one in the next 2 weeks! Accessories will come later, I just wanted to show the paint job that we did!

You will hear it from me non-stop on here.... Paint your walls and don't be afraid of color! I love how warm my bathroom feels now and I actually want to just sit in the bathtub now! (my husband has never sat in the tub until we painted the walls... I think it cozied it up for him too!)

Laundry Room Reveal

I am sure that my husband and I are one of the few couples that still share a computer but that is about to change. My husband is working from home now and it has made it pretty much impossible for me to have computer access but his boss is buying him a new computer so that should change in the next week or so!.... So if you have been wondering why my posts have been far and few between, that is the reason.

But.... I am still busy doing stuff around my house in the mean time so I do have stuff to post.

Right before taking off to Colorado for the Thanksgiving holiday, I broke down and decided that I wanted to get my laundry room done and can I just say that I LOVE the way that it turned out!

I think I am one of the few people out there that doesn't mind doing laundry and I think I have figured out why..... I only do laundry once a week and I have discovered that most people laundry everyday and that is why they don't like it!

Well, if you are doing laundry a lot, you are spending lots of time in your laundry room and that is a great reason on why you should decorate that sad room in the corner of the house! :)

Here is my laundry room!

Once again, the pictures don't do it justice.... the paint color isn't very good in the picture but it is a fun light green color.

AND... Once again, I spent pretty much NOTHING!!!!

I bought the green paint for a project I will someday do on my staircase and knowing that I wasn't going to use a full gallon I decided to paint my laundry room with what I knew would be left over.

Here is a picture without the flash.... wall color looks worse in these pictures.

So I have to talk about my words on the wall! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these! I painted these on... I have the equipment to project these on the walls and paint them and customize them the way that I want so it is easy for me to do this. You could use the vinyl lettering but I am too cheap for vinyl lettering :)

Don't you just LOVE the saying?

I showed a couple of sayings to my husband and he started laughing and said "I think you know which one I want".... Of course we both agreed with "Drop your drawers here"! We both love some humor in our lives so we went with that one.

The paint, both the black and red, were left overs from other projects.

The black boxes were purchased years ago and have been used in various spots for storage. This shelf seemed like the perfect spot in this house.

The red basket was given to us as a house warming gift in my last house and I decided to put toilet paper in it so that it is up high enough from my daughter ripping it apart!

The basket is used for my dirty rags and towels from the kitchen and was purchased years ago at Roberts for about $.13 (yes that amount is correct) and has been sitting in my basement unused.

This shelf was from my last house and was painted with left over red paint from the family room.

Wreath was purchased a while ago also for like $2.50 from my favorite wholesale place Taiwan.

I haven't finished the accessorizing on the shelf yet but I figure I have time for that. The things that are on there are just things I had.

Remember my Inspiration Piece... the rug, it is in there also as well as my $1 waste basket!

So you may remember this mirror from my fall centerpiece. I decided that I wanted it in here instead and hung it up over the existing mirror with some ribbon I had and it just hung on a large nail and I am absolutely in love with the affect!

I did purchase the towel just for this room and it cost me a whole $3.50!

So... if you count up the cost of items recently purchased for this room... that would be a whole $3.50 for the towel and $1 for the waste basket if you want to add that in (I guess the paint also but that was already purchased for another project).

So cheap! And I have to tell you that I love to go into my laundry room now!

Like I mentioned once before, this room is also our one and only bathroom on the main level so I am no longer embarrassed for people to come in here.... I wouldn't be surprised if I leave the door open just so people will want to go in there and look if not to use. :)

*Side note - notice that the ceiling over the shelf is painted the same green color as the wall. I followed the same rule here as I would in a bay window and I am so happy that I did. If I would have left it white, it would have completely distracted from the fun painted words and boxes and I don't want that!

Tip Of The Week - Painted Archways

I hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season thus far! It has been snowing here most of the day and has really brought the Christmas season with it!

It is good to be back home after spending over a week and half in Colorado with my husband's family and now I need to get in gear and get some stuff around my house done.... both Christmas decorating and regular decorating!

My tip for this week is something that I thought of while I was in Colorado. My mother-in-law has redone a big chunk of her house these past few months and I noticed that she followed this one rule perfectly through out her house and I thought I would share it with everyone in case they didn't know this little tip.

How many of you have an archway or a door type opening like this picture?

I know it is common for people to come to these when they are painting and not know whether they should paint it or not if they are doing an accent color and both walls on each side of the doorway are different colors.

Here is the rule *Paint it the same color as the wall as the flow of traffic goes.

So basically, if you were to start at your front door and walk through the rooms, your archways should be painted the same color as the wall you are looking at.

I happen to have a DON'T example of my last house!

I wanted to paint the archway and my husband didn't like that idea, I let him win this argument because I was lucky that he was even letting me in the first place. It really bothers me that it isn't painted here.... after I painted this, I did officially find out that it is a design rule and I should have gone with my designer instinct and told my husband it was a rule.

Oh well, we weren't there long and I have made up for it in this house.

Here is my living room when I painted the base color. Notice I painted the archway the same color as the wall.

Then here it is stained.

What you don't see is that the back side of this wall is the burnt orange/red color. This just really helps with the flow of traffic and is much easier on the eye as the eye looks around.

If you notice on the very top picture, there are 2 archways. The first archway is white because that wall is white.... the back archway is the warm chocolaty color to flow with the back wall color.

Hopefully this is useful to others since we happened to make this mistake in our own house at one point.

Fear of Color!

A common thing that I run into as a designer is that people are afraid of color or making a color choice for their walls! Nothing can change the look of your room for a better price than paint. I am a HUGE advocate of painted walls. We don't do plain walls in this household. My advice to everyone is Be Daring! I have never been afraid to paint a wall. Have I always liked the color afterwards... No. But do not judge a color while you are painting it on or even a day or two after. Give it time to sit. Go sit in the room and see how it makes you feel. I am HUGE on having a room make you feel good. Which brings me to the next point I want to talk about:

Please paint your walls a color that makes you feel the very best. So many people paint there walls what the trend is and afterwards they don't feel real great with their decision. For example- I love the look of the Blue and Brown trend we have recently seen. I think it is a very elegant look, but I could never have it in my house. For some reason, the color blue gives me a yucky feeling! I don't know why, it just does. My whole house is warm colors: reds, oranges, greens, golds, etc. I like the feeling of my room being a blanket for me, warm and cozy. You need to feel safe and comfortable in your own home and painting your walls the colors that you love is a great way to do that. A gallon of paint on average costs about $20 - $25. Some colors will take 2 gallons, but in my experience, you can do alot with just 1 gallon.

The picture above is of my old house. As you can see, I am not afraid of color. I absolutely love this color. I love it so much that I have painted my current house in the same color (pictures will come later). I get so many compliments in my house now of how it makes people feel and how it is so cozy and such a fun color. My husband was very afraid to have me paint the walls this color, but I convinced him to at least do these 2 walls. After he lived with it for a while, he loved it. He didn't want me to paint the back kitchen wall that color, so I did it while he was work one day :) He ended up loving it and wanted it done in our current house also. People are afraid at first and they pretty much always warm up to it and fall in love with color on the walls.
This picture is of my parent's cabin. We did a faux texture on this wall and it completely warms up the space. The rest of the walls are the pure white walls, this color just warms up the whole space and it doesn't feel like this large empty room. When they bought the cabin, every wall was white and it felt so cold and sparce in there, even though it was completely full of furniture.
Some people may be afraid of a really bold color, why not try a darker neutral color? This chocolatey color is so warm feeling and it doesn't make the room look dark at all, you just have to pair it with some lighter items in the room. My baby's nursery is a SUPER DARK brown and it doesn't make her room feel closed in at all because of what I have paired with it (those pictures will come very soon).
Now I hope the Berdan's don't mind me using their picture. They are selling (or did sale) their house and I took some pictures of it. I absolutely loved what they did in their bedroom. They did a 2 tone painted wall and I think it turned out fabulous. Another great example of using fairly neutral colors but creating a bold look.

Honestly and truly, painting your walls is the best way to add color to a room for the least amount of money. If you don't like it, you are only out about $25 and you can find a new color. Home Depot now offers some paint samples that you can purchase for a few dollars to paint a small section of your wall if you are concerned about how a color will look. Take the steps necessary for you, but please take the steps to creating a dynamic room with color and paint.