Let's take this party upstairs, shall we?

Things are progressing a bit slower in my studio/office in the basement so I don't have anything new and exciting to share there tonight, so let's take this party back upstairs where some projects are either now finished or underway.

The Living Room: 

For those new to this blog, you'll want to scroll back all the way to 2012 when I posted a lot of before pictures, but this room is totally different from where it started. The biggest thing being that we added the open staircase to the basement, the unique dividing 1/2 and 3/4 walls, can lighting and the hardwood floors. On to the smaller projects in that room…

Now that I was starting to decorate this room, I felt like everything with very muted in color or neutral and that wasn't my intention at all. A lot of the art going in this room is going to be bold and colorful so I needed to do something dramatic in here to help play off that.

I decided to paint an accent wall. I knew I didn't have it in me to do anything like I did in the basement. I was thinking just a single color. Something I could paint in an afternoon people!

Went to the paint store and probably picked about 25 different colors, ranging from a metallic gold all the way to a midnight blue. I didn't know what I want to do.

I narrowed it down to a pale metallic bronze, 2 shades of a dark teal, a navy/dark gray color and charcoal. I taped them up and looked at them at all times of day.

I was leaning more charcoal but my husband really liked the navy gray color so I went with that. 

See, I can compromise!

So I prepped to paint. I taped off the wall and painted a random something on the wall as I usually do and paint over it quickly after. Couldn't help myself this time.

I used the same painting tip I gave you earlier to get a crisp line. After I taped, I used ceiling paint and painted over the tape and since my baseboards are also white, I painted there too so then no colored paint we will bleed through. 

This painting project took place right before Thanksgiving… I know, took forever to post this!

So here is the room dolled up for the holidays!

Right after I took these picture, I looked down my stairs at the wall directly under my newly painted wall upstairs and it looked so blah white so I painted that too! Impromptu painting.

Do the Hokey Pokey

Now that we are done looking at that side of the room, let's turn around and address the other side… But ignore the ugly vertical blinds as you turn, ok?

We have this great stacked stone fireplace and adjacent, a not so great built-in bookcase that just seemed so tiny in the space and since the day we bought this house I have envisioned this bookcase going floor-to-ceiling and potentially chiseling off the 3 small stone shelves. (I know, some people that are as hardcore into mid-century design as I am may gasp at this… and is partly why I haven't bitten the bullet yet and removed these iconic shelves. I am torn between staying authentic and wanting a practical mantel!) If we remove the shelves, the would mantel run asymmetrically on the fireplace and becoming one of the bookshelves (can you picture it? no, don't worry,its illustrated below!)

So on New Years Eve or Day, can't recall, my husband decided to take a sledge hammer to the bookcase and started to demo right then and there. Wow did that become one big dusty mess. I think I am still swiffering spots where the dust traveled!

So like I said, this all took place around New Years and now its April and you're probably thinking that you'll see some finished pictures next, right? Wrong. 

When we had the flooring installed, I noticed a scratch on one of the boards and asked for it to be fixed.  It was "fixed" by just putting a dark wood filler over it and buffed it out. Well, that may work for regular flooring but ours is strand bamboo with a different kind of dull finish so applying something like that to this floor leaves, well, look below and of course it is directly under the can light like its out there for show. My eye went directly to it everyday and it made me so sad.

The flooring installer said the only other thing they could do would be to try to cut the board out but since most of the boards were under the bookcase, it would be very hard to remove without damaging other boards… if only the bookcase wasn't there… if only the bookca… ding ding ding!

So, I immediately called the flooring guy once the dust settled from the sledge hammering and asked if he could fix the board now. :D 

He said, "sure."

 I said,  "great, when?"

He said, "End of March, its my first opening." 

Peter Gabriel record screeches… March! That was 3 months away. :( 

Yay! Its the end of March and its all fix!

Now the plywood shell is up that we can build the actual bookcase into. I hope that happens soon!

A tale of 2 walls

Now that the basement is well under way, we decided to start paying some attention to my soon-to-be home office/art studio. The biggest decision on my plate was what color to paint it, rrrrrrrr, what col-ors to paint it. I can't have a studio where I need to be creative, painted in just one color... oh no! I needed a game plan.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Not much to look at now but what these walls didn't know was that I had big plans for them.

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Anyone that knows me knows that I like a nice Chevron. A zig zag, a herringbone, a squiggly-do. So I decided I'd do just that. The idea was born and I was going to paint a chevron pattern up wall B. Not just any chevron but a multicolored, multi zagging chevron.

I checked the local big box stores and paint stores for different thicknesses of painters tape. I might be crazy to try to do this wall but I wasn't crazy enough to try to paint straight lines by hand! Well no one seemed to have what I wanted so crazy me I started to research online and found a "tape candy store" and ordered pretty much every thickness from an 1/8" to 3/4" in varying tackinesses, tackinesses? Ok, its a word...

Now I have the tape so now what? I did what I always do, I mocked up an idea on my Mac. 

I came up with the design and started playing with the colors. Once I figured that out, then it was time to actually find the paint colors. 

In between all this chevron planning I decided to paint other walls of my office a soft pale teal aqua color and from there I decided wall A would be a glossy chocolate brown (we'll get back to that wall in a second) so I figured I would start the base of wall B also in the chocolate brown and then just pick colors I liked individually. These were the winners.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You have painted in the past and no matter what you do your paint always bleeds off and goes underneath the painters tape. Well I have a tip for you that may blow your mind and you will never have bleed-thru again!

Ok, after that coat dries, now its time for the fun part... Painting in the lines.

Then I took left over dark teal and painted the angled wall next to the Chevron. This wall will be part of a bigger project down the road. 

Tada! Done with wall B. Now back to wall A!

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Ok, wall A, remember how I told you above I painted it a glossy dark brown? It was all because I found a 1960's electric wall-mounted fireplace at a resale shop and it was a bronzy brown color and I wanted it to kind of blend into the wall. I painted the wall and hung it up but it was missing something and I needed an excuse to use more of my painters tape.

I decided it might be cool to do a retro brick pattern on the wall in the same brown paint only in a matte finish so when the light hits the wall, you can see the contrast. 

Using 1/2" tape this time I started to make 4x9 vertical bricks on the wall.

tada! Wall A is done too!

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Then I painted the ceiling white leaving the beams exposed to add more height to the studio and then my husband and I sanded and painted the rusty I-Beam and pole a clean crisp white.

Next up was the 2ft span of wall behind my office door. It was wasted space until I came across a unique and inexpensive bookcase online that fit right in. From there we mounted some additional floating shelves and I added some retro looking cork board squares. Still need to add some trim and fix the baseboards but then this side will be ready to decorate!

Now back to wall A

Time flies when you aren't blogging

Has it really almost been a year since I last updated this thing?! Yikes! 

I owe you all an apology and about a million reno updates! 

So, without further adieu... here we go!