Sweetie & Joy » Bedroom

I took a risk (surprised? Me too!)

Mon, 25 May 2015 10:00:19 +0000

Remember when I chatted a bit about painting my bedroom (here)? That seemingly simple project took weeks. WEEKS. Truthfully, months. Not because it was a particularly difficult project. In fact, due to the coved ceilings and (rather obnoxious and eventually to be removed) faux fireplace and the various doors/windows in the room, there wasn’t a great deal of actual wall-space to be painted. And, the delay wasn’t due to my (admittedly notorious) indecisiveness either. I boldly chose a paint colour lickity-split-ishly and rushed out to buy the paint before I could question my colour choice (since, once paint is purchased, you’re committed) (because if you buy paint from the good Mr Benjamin Moore like I do, painting is a bit of a financial commitment.)

Nope. The delay was caused by this…

Yup. An adorable squishy active smiley drooly nine month old.

Best reason for a delay ever. :)

However, the lack of painting progress seriously started to wear on me a bit. You see, that same ridiculously cute little man isn’t a particularly predictable napper. Sometimes he naps for a glorious two hours. Sometimes he barely shuts his lovely long-lashed eyelids and – poof! – he’s well-rested and ready to play again. This lack of predictability made it super difficult to get much done on the painting front. The days where I’d predict a lengthy nap were the days that I’d dip my virgin paintbrush into the paint and – bing! – he’d wake up. On the days that I assumed he’d take a quick little cat nap, he’d sleep for hours.

Yup. It’s hard to paint with a baby.

So, defeatedly, I called in the reinforcements: my parents. Mom (happily!) looked after Squishy while dad and I tackled the paint job (thanks mom and dad!) And I’m thrilled to have this project done. Thrilled! And I’m (almost) equally happy with the results!

Here’s what I started with…

And here’s the room lovelied-up with a wee bit of BM Copley Gray…

A full gallery of after shots is pending (there are curtains to go up and a mirror to hang and a few other to-do’s that I’d like to to-do before officially announcing the room DONE) but for now the painting part of this bedroom mini-reno project is complete (can I get a big ol’ yay for progress?) (Yup – YAY!)

What’s that you say? You thought I’d decided on Revere Pewter? I thought I had too. But it just seemed a little too predictable. I painted our bedroom at our last humble abode, our happy little 1940′s house, in Revere Pewter and I loved it, but I wanted to try something different. I’ve been eye-ing up Copley Gray for a while now, and I decided to take the slightly bolder paint-colour plunge.

So am I happy? Mostly. Admittedly, it’s greener on my walls than I’d hoped. At some points in the day, depending on the light, one might even call it (cringe…) sage. But at other times (and, really, most times) it’s a lovely gray/brown/green that is super cozy and warm and rustic (can a colour be rustic? If so, this one is definitely rustic.) And it’s far (far!) better than the poop-ish brown that adorned the walls when we bought this house, so I’m a happy girl for now.

And if, in a few years, I decide to repaint, hopefully Little Squish will be old enough to help? Or at least stay occupied for a bit while mommy paints?

Wishful thinking, I know. :)

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My triumphant (albeit slow moving) return to painting (aka the colour in our bedroom is driving me bonkers)

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 11:00:19 +0000

When we first came to look at this old mauve-coloured house nearly two years ago, I walked away thinking that the master bedroom was painted black. In fact, it’s not black. It’s brown. But it’s a dark-ish brown and the blinds were continually drawn in this room during showings (theory: the home owners were really vampires), and the colour appeared even darker and more awful than it actually is (although it is, indeed, pretty awful.)

For your viewing pleasure (or, perhaps, disbelief), here’s what our master bedroom looked like the first time we saw it…

Ack, eh? Yes. Ack indeed. Flowers and nic-nacs and tiny lamps with tiny lampshades and stuff everywhere. Ev-ver-ry-where. Once again, I think it’s worth noting that we bought a house with rooms that looked like that. We’re very very very brave, my Sweetie and me.

(And yes, the two pictures hanging above the bed are indeed hung at different heights. Because lazer level be damned, willy-nilly picture hanging is how the previous house owners rolled. Those crazy loveable crooked-picture-hanging vampire-esque rebels.)

Of course, when Sweetie and I moved in, all that stuff (thankfully!) went away (and, miraculously, the room suddenly looked a gazillion times larger.) But that didn’t change the fact that the room is brown.

Icky brown, to be exact.

Here’s another look at that wall colour, minus all the clutter and with a wee bit of natural light…

Well hello there, ridiculously cute little man! :) Behind all that squishy adorableness are my ugly brown walls. A (temporarily) comfy black cat is also lounging somewhere back there. In fact, this picture was taken mere moments before I had to intervene in feline/infant interactions and declare “No, we don’t chew on the cat.” (A statement I never ever thought I’d have to make prior to having a baby.)

So what colour am I going with? Alas, I’m not being particularly original or daring with this project. Instead I’m falling back on the reliable, always lovely, Revere Pewter. I painted our bedroom at our beloved little 1940′s house this colour and I loved it.

It’s peaceful. It’s serene. It’s an actual colour and dark enough to be impactful, but not so much so that it’s overwhelming. Some have called Revere Pewter the perfect paint colour. I call it lovely and soft and well-suited for a bedroom. (And, particularly, for my bedroom.)

Now all I have to do is find the time to paint this aforementioned bedroom. With a small boy who doesn’t nap predictably (or, oftentimes, for very long), this might be a project best suited for the evening hours (once that same small sweet little man is fast asleep for the night.) Assuming, of course, that I can stay awake long enough to attack those ugly brown walls with my trusted paintbrush.

But, ahhhhh… Yup. It feels good to return to home renos, even if I now move a whole lot more slowly than before. Slow progress of any sort is still progress nonetheless. :)

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A quick closet makeover (another “slap some paint on it and it’ll look so much better” sort of project) (aka: paint fixes everything)

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 10:00:17 +0000

Some people have scary basements. I had a scary closet. (Well, I have a scary basement too, but that’s a whole other story for a whole other blog post.) How scary was our bedroom closet? It looked like this when we moved in…

Ack. Nightmarish, eh? Yup. Absolutely terrifying.

And since “make closet pretty” wasn’t first and foremost (or even seventh and semi-important) on my big ol’ home reno to do list, it stayed that way for the past ten months. Empty. Ugly. Mocking me. Daring me to step inside (which I would never ever ever do due to the aforementioned scariness factor.)

So where were all of our clothes? In the nursery closet of course. (See where this is leading?) But, with Baby on the way in a few short weeks (yep, you guessed it), it was time to clear out that closet. Meaning that it was also time for us to face the scariness once and for all and make our bedroom closet a much more hospitable, much less horror movie-esque little place.

So what did I do?

I painted it.

And by that I mean that I really quickly and lazily painted it, using leftover Edgecomb Gray paint that I already had on hand. Did I remove the wallpaper from the walls? Nope. Did I sand down the drywall compound patching job that Sweetie did (since originally there were plaster cracks on the back wall of the closet that made it look even more terrifying?) Nope. Did I prime or prep or do anything to make the ugly innards of my closet more humane-looking? Nope. I just slapped some paint on those closet walls and called it a day.

And it didn’t turn out so bad. Behold the after…

I even tossed a quick coat of paint on the baseboards. Same colour as the walls. We’re not talking anything fancy here (it is a closet, afterall.)

Yep. A quick coat of paint and suddenly the closet ain’t so scary any more.

(I mean, I wouldn’t want to hang out and read a book in there, of course, but it’s way better.)

So there. That’s my scary-closet-turned-not-quite-as-scary-due-to-Baby’s-impending-arrival story for you. Since I’m guessing that Baby will need its own closet.

You know, for cute little onesies and pretty dresses (if Baby is a girl) or tiny overalls (if this wiggly little belly-mover is a boy) and stuff. :)

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