What Color is Your Armoire?

I have been trying to decide what I want to do with this big pine monster remnant from the 80s ever since I made over this other pine 80s leftover.

While I love my newly made over curio cabinet, It's leaving me verklemt about what to do with the armoire.  Should I paint the armoire black as well?  After some thought, I'm leaning away from that as I fear it will loom even larger from its corner in the now mostly neutral room.  So what do you think about white...really more of an ivory?  

This French antique with a distressed finish is beautiful and I've often wished I could cut out the wood inside the "frames" on mine.  They seem less imposing with the cut outs.

I've also thought about painting it green (one of my fave colors) and I love the soft shade of this one and the delicate white pattern in the framed inserts.

And here's a black, lightly distressed, armoire I found on Beneath My Heart:

I guess I'll stew on it over the long (blissfully HOT) holiday weekend.  If you have an opinion though, do share. 

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all...most especially our wonderful soldiers, past and present.

Calling All Cafe Curtains!

As I wrap up the living room, stairs, hallway paint project from hell, my thoughts have turned to the kitchen.  It's next up on the list.  Just the walls and the ceiling. 

And I am desperate to put a window treatment on the side window as it looks directly at the neighbors house and I feel very exposed when nothing is on the window.  Currently I have that privacy film that is so ugly but very effective at preserving some privacy.

So I have decided I'm going to do a cafe curtain in some fun pattern and color.  I want to maintain the light, but figure I'll have to line them since I hate the way curtains look without lining when the sun shines through them.  They seem...skimpy...neked almost.

The way I figure it, these are my options in style and for mounting.

Starting with the mount outside the window frame. When I remodeled my kitchen (maybe 7 years ago?), I had the two very beat up windows replaced and the contractor stained the frames to match my beautiful new maple cabinets.  I really don't want to put holes in the frames so I really like this option.

Ignore the mounting on this one as I picked it for the style.  What do you think of the grommet style cafe curtain?  I was thinking of hanging as shown above using the ring clips I have everywhere else in the house (so easy to work with), but I do like the grommet style.

I've seen this style before where a cafe curtain is combined with a glass shelf (featuring plants and clear glass vessels) to provide almost full coverage of the window.  I like it, but it doesn't really fit the style of my current kitchen.  BTW, I think a tension mount was used for the curtains.

This is my favorite by far.  I think those are napkin rings fastened to the ribbon and I love how they contrast with the rubbed bronze rod.  I really like the texture of the natural fabric too, though I still plan to go with a pattern. Although, I've been known to change my mind a few hundred times before a project is completed ;-)

What do you think?

Buffing the Living Room

I have been knee deep in paint for a few nights now as the living room undergoes its new wall color.

When I asked for two gallons of satin Sherwin Williams Buff (I highly recommend Duration - it really covers well), the very nice girl helping me said, "You mean Believable Buff?"  "No", I assured her confidently, "Just Buff".  Hmmm.  She had to go look up the number which had me suddenly questioning my decision.  After all,  Believable Buff is one of their best sellers and Buff doesn't even make their top 25 list.

Happily I stuck to my decision and am loving the color more each day.  I was afraid it would wash the room out given my upholstered furniture is in the off white, beige family.  But, it's actually a beautiful, soft, warm ivory.

Here is a corner where you can see the difference between the old (yellow) and new colors.  I had started by painting a huge patch on one wall that gets direct sunlight and it looked so....well, white.  But I reasoned, lets try it in a corner that gets almost no direct light (yes, I have these conversations with myself all the time - usually in my head, though not always).

So I painted this corner and then rehung the artwork to live with it again and just...you know...make sure.

Here's the arch going into the dining room that is fully painted with the new color.  And yes, I even moved that ginormous armoire out of the way, squeezed behind it and painted and moved it back when I was done.  It could go back a skosh more, but I will have to enlist man muscles to finish the job as mine have had quite enough of the whole experience.

I hope to get the living room done today and if I'm feeling really energetic, the walls going upstairs and the upstairs hallway (probably won't happen today though).

Painting my walls is a somewhat painful experience.  The walls are rather elder (70 years) and plaster (read: very uneven) so you can't just sweep over them with a roller and git er done.  No, I have to go over the area in question with a brush first, then later with the roller or sometimes no roller at all ... just two layers with the brush.  Needless to say, it is a labor intensive process and often takes a bit longer than I'd like.

Wish me luck and have a beautiful DIY weekend :-)

White Out in the Living Room!

The Sherwin Williams store by me had an unadvertised sale this past Saturday (40% off ALL PAINTS - even Duration - my personal favorite), so I bought a couple gallons of Buff - one of the neutrals I used on the  horizontal stripes I did in my dining room.  I painted a large patch on the wall Sunday to see how it translates in the living room and I'm just not sure. 

As I've mentioned before, working with paint chips and fabrics all day has driven me to want to neutralize my house more.  All that color can wear you out by the end of the day.  My eyes just wanted to rest at night.

As I ponder my new paint choice, here are some pretty mostly white living rooms that I think got it right...

White can look very warm and cozy, it just has to be offset with the right mixture of other colors or neutrals and textures. 

I have so much painting to do, but hey it keeps me off the streets and out of trouble right ;-).