Questions & Answers

*Do you have some tips on how to make your home flow?

This is a question that I was asked of my good friend Melinda and even though I sent her an email with the answer, I thought it would be a good question to post on here in case other people had the same question.

1. Keep the colors through out your home similar in each room - This doesn't mean that your house has to be boring and have only a few colors in it, but if you keep all of the colors in the same tones or hues, than you will create a flow.

Here is an example from my own house;

Here is my Living Room: (and yes it still isn't finished, I need more money for this room! :)

But you can see that I have Chocolate Brown, a Golden, Peachy Orange, Red, and Black accents in this room. All very warm colors and on the similar side of the color wheel.

And my Living Room is open to my Family Room:

My Family Room is done in the same warm tones but different colors. Both rooms have red in them, but the red from my Living Room is a bit cooler tone and more of an accent and the red in my Family Room is more of an orange-red and is the dominant color.

I brought Green in the Family Room as an accent along with the same Chocolate Brown and Black.

Then my Family Room is pretty much part of the same room as my Kitchen.

The Kitchen is done in the same Red and Tan on the walls as the Family Room and has the same accents of the Green, Chocolate, and Black.

Now here on the right of this picture you can kind of see a black bench ( I haven't gotten to taken pictures of this area yet) but this is where you walk in from the garage. On this black bench I here, I have 2 pillows. These 2 pillows are done in the same Red, Green, and Black, but I decided to add just something a bit more to them and I added Purple. Still completely flows but I threw in just a little surprise with an addition color with the Purple.

My Laundry Room is also just off of here (I am in the process of doing this room so there should be pictures in a few weeks.) But I am painting the walls Green and accenting with the same Red and Black and I am going to bring in a touch of Golden Yellow.

This is the best way that I can explain to keep a flow... Subtly bring in 1 or 2 news colors while keeping a few of the other rooms colors.

*Rules to be broken - So I believe in keeping in with this rule at all times except in the bedrooms or at least the kids bedrooms! I do believe that a kids bedroom should be reflective of them and should have their personality in it so don't keep with your general home colors just to keep the flow. Let their room reflect who they are.

2. Don't paint each individual room entirely a different color as the next - I think it really helps to keep a flow if you have a general color that you use through out your house and then bring in painted accent walls.

By now, everyone knows that I LOVE stained walls! This is the general paint I have used to keep the flow in my home. I didn't care for the basic light tan that was through out my whole house, so I decided to cover it up with stain and it does go through a huge chunk of my home. Every area of the main level has it except for the laundry room. I will have a bit of it on my stairs in a whole wall display/creation I am doing, as well as the office section of my loft area. ( I didn't do my whole upstairs loft area because I don't want to be on a huge ladder on stairs while 7 months pregnant) But I also did my master bedroom as well as I am going to do some in my spare bedroom.

Again, each room has it's own feel and colors (somewhat), but they are all tied together with this staining that I have chosen for my home.

Then of course I have my accent walls through out with the red, green, and even painted stained walls.

If each room is painted a totally different color, it creates a choppy feel and not a smooth transition.

I hope that this gives somewhat of an answer on how to create a flow in your home!

Questions & Answers

I get asked questions on my comments and I figure the best way for me to answer them is to do a post of all of the questions that I get for the week. So if you have asked me a question, check back here on FRIDAYS to see what my answer is.

Also, if you do have a question for me, can you please EMAIL it to me instead of leaving it under the comments section of that post? Sometimes I may not see the comment and won't get your question answered. Send me an email to budgetdesigngirl@gmail.com and if your question is about a certain project, leave me the title of the post.

Now, onto this weeks questions!

*What kind of stain did I use to stain (glaze) my walls? What prep work did I do?

I did absolutely NO prep work people!!! I can't explain to you how incredible simple this is. My walls were painted a very simple light tan already when it was built and I just went straight over it as it was. I didn't even wipe it down, I didn't want to take the time to do that. In my living room, I did paint one wall before I glazed over it because I wanted an accent color. I painted this wall 2 days before I stained over it to give it a curing period. (This wall did take a little longer to dry after I stained it, just so you know) Don't be surprised if your wall is still a bit tacky for a few days.

The stain that I used was an OIL STAIN by Minwax. Here is the thing with the stain..... I am sure you can use water base stain and it would turn out fine. If you are afraid of doing this and it is a big step for you, I actually would probably use water base and here's why... If you use an oil base and want to paint over it, you will more than likely have to use an oil base primer over it before you can repaint your walls! I don't think that a water base paint will adhere to an oil base stain. But, I don't know if you will get the sheen with a water base as you will with the oil base. The oil base I used was also a sealant so I have a beautiful sheen to mine and I believe it is more durable on your walls than a water base.

An IMPORTANT note on Oil Base vs. Water Base..... Oil base is VERY smelly!!!!! When I stain my house, I open up all of the windows surrounding the area and then we avoid that room like the plague. When I did my master bedroom, we went and stayed at my parent's house one night and then slept in the spare bedroom another night just to be safe. Make sure that you wear a mask when doing this and that you wear gloves to protect your skin so that it doesn't get into your pores.

So..... now that you know the pros and cons of each, you decide what works best with you.

*What is KSL?

I have mentioned this before, but for those who have just recently started following this blog, KSL is a local classifieds website that you can buy/sell pretty much anything you want. I have an addiction to it, I buy and sell stuff on here all the time. You can find some amazing deals, you just have to be patient waiting to find that perfect deal. F.Y.I....I live in Utah, so this is a local website for Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.

This could actually be compared to Craigslist, but I don't like Craigslist as much as KSL. If you live in another state, check around to see if you have something similar to this in your area.

*How do I work (mainly paint) on my home with a baby?

For those who don't know, I have a 13 month old daughter and I am 6 1/2 months pregnant with my second daughter. (If you find me talking about Kenidi in any of my posts, that is my daughter on the way). This is definitely not an easy task but I get A LOT of support and help from my husband (and mom).

Everything that I do is in sections. I pick a small area that I can work on either in an evening or on a Saturday morning. My daughter goes down around 7:30 for bed, so I usually will try and paint a small area while she is sleeping. (lighting isn't always the greatest but I haven't had a problem so far, also, it goes much faster if you can get your husband to help you :)

If I need to STAIN a little bit larger area, my husband will take my daughter out and run errands or go for a hike on a Saturday morning or my mom will take her on a day that she doesn't have anything going on. On days that I stain, I keep my daughter out of the house ALL DAY just to be safe that she isn't breathing anything toxic. When I paint, I keep her away from it but I'm not as worried about the paint as I am the stain.

I definitely couldn't do what I do around the house without the support of my husband and my mom, but I am bound and determined to get every room painted and stained the way that I want it before I have my second little one. I can do the decorating with a little one, but it would almost be impossible to get the walls done the way that I want with a newborn.