"Oops"! We Painted Stripes!

I have to be honest. I have sort of a haphazard approach to designing the spaces in our house. I rarely have a well laid out plan. Although I find inspiration everywhere, the beginnings of the rooms often start in the "oops" paint section(cans of paint that have been mixed and were returned for whatever reason, ie, mis-tint, customer chickened out...) of the home improvement store. This paint is marked down from about $20-25 or more for a full gallon to 5 bucks! A quart that is normally $13 will be marked down to $2.50. And for a person like me, who is likely to spend upwards of an hour  pouring over the dreamy display of paint samples, to pick out, oh about, 10; take them home, tape 'em up on the walls and shortly change my mind about every single last one of them, having a ready-mixed shade, just waiting for my "yay" or "nay" AND is 75% off--- that's the ticket for me, sister!

The drawbacks to this method of paint selection is fairly obvious. What if you've decided on a color and it's not magically waiting for you in the "oops" section? Well, then, just buy a regular can and have it mixed! Stick with your plan! But if you don't have a plan, (like me) it's a lot of fun hunting down pretty shades that will surprise and delight you, and even take you out of your design box. For example, my home's palate started off with grays and whites accented with turquiose. DD (my darling husband, Dan) and I were ready to paint the downstairs powder room a medium-light gray. While I was out picking up some painting supplies, I stopped by my favorite section, and to my surprise and delight, a perfect can of semi-gloss BLACK was calling me over. Black? Pure black, you say? Yep. Black. Pure black. And for 5 bucks! Why not? It was the really good kind with paint and primer in one. So I bought it, and as I drove home, I plotted out how I was going to convince my hubby that a black powder room would be a great idea!!

But this post isn't about the black powder room. (Which I love, but isn't finished, so I'll post about that later.) This post is about the upstairs hallway, which I also love. For a while now, I've been thinking that the house could use a little more color, a little more in the way of fun. It's starting to feel a little too serious. I've been lusting over striped walls and thought that would be just the thing to liven up the hallway and be a perfect backdrop for my family gallery wall. So, I got out my paint collection and chose my colors.


"reduced", my favorite word!

 And made a plan. I just chose the colors that I wanted to use and mocked up some stripes in a word document, got out the painter's tape, and got to it!!




the "before"



I must say, painting stripes is time consuming because, unless you are leaving the space where the tape was blank, you have to wait till your first stripe dries before retaping and painting the stripe next to it. So for this one wall, it pretty much took us all day to plan, tape and paint. I think it's totally worth it, don't you? and I (meaning DD) changed out the super plain light fixtures to these super cute vintage looking semi-flush pendants. (One of the few items that I bought full price.) 

First stripe goes up! (And one light fixture as it dries)



And then we added the blue...

At this point, I considered leaving it. I thought it was very pretty as is. But then I realized that I was just being chicken and a little lazy. (Just this took about two hours...) My plan was to give the house personality and energy.....So I went for the GUSTO! And ended up with....

THIS!! Do you like it?

Stay tuned for the installation of the family picture gallery going up on this wall. It's great....And I put it together BY MYSELF!! Yep, I used the drill and everything. Can't wait to show you!

Roadside Treasure

I LOVE plantation shutters. Who doesn't right? Walking into a room with them is always so refreshing. And their name-- Plantation Shutters. It's transporting. I feel like I could be sitting in a swing, on a covered wraparound porch, the easy southern breeze flowing through my white cotton skirt and blouse. Sipping a mint julep and watching the men play cricket in the lawn. Can you see it? Oooh, I'm there! The tidy, uniform slats are so pleasing. They bring substance and tradition to a room without being fussy. I just love 'em!! But the price for outfitting my house with the shutters is just more than we want to spend right now. So when I saw a pile of perfect white wooden shutters stacked against a tree as I was driving through a beautifully canopied neighborhood in South Pasadena, CA waiting for the junkman, my heart sort of skipped a beat.   

As thrilled as I was to see the trash / treasure, I was aware of all of, well maybe most of, the factors that made the aquistion problematic.

Problematic factor #1: I don't live in Pasadena. I live in Phoenix. And I didn't drive out to see my family, I flew. I can't take plantation shutters home on a plane! And what am I going to do with them anyway? Will they be magically sized to fit on my bedroom windows? Doubtful. But they're in PERfect condition and I want/need them.

Problematic factor #2: These suckers are still connected to the frames that have been ripped off of wherever they had been hanging. So not only are they long, (possibly too long for the backseat of my sister's car which I was driving) but they are full of nails and jagged, splintery wood. Am I willing to try to shove them in and hope that I don't scratch up the car, the shutters and my arms? Ummm....maybe....

Problematic factor #3: As PROUD as I always am of my street treasures once they are safely at home, all de-grimed, de-spiderwebbed, re-painted and re-purposed, a swift streak of embarrassment often runs through my gut at the moment of aquisition. After all, this is an affluent neighborhood with huge, established homes. What if one of these rich people see me? And what if this in fact, isn't waiting for a trash truck pickup? Am I stealing them? What if the homeowner sees me and comes out while I'm parked in their driveway stealing stuff off their......OH MY GOD!!!! They're coming out!!!!!

Yes, the homeowners came out of the house! But to my surprise and delight, they were very, very sweet. They had just hosted a church fundraiser yard sale and these remained. After they convinced me that it was a great idea to take them and figure out what I was going to do with them later, the husband brought out hammer to  remove enough of the framing so they fit in the car, helped me load them, and actually took me to their garage to tempt me with more free leftovers!!

Aren't they so proper?



So, now, months several months and several garage holding areas later, I'm finally getting around to using my beloved plantation shutters. (And when I say "I", I mean my husband and myself.) Since they, of course don't fit any of the windows in my house, I thought it would be a great idea to use them for cabinet doors!

So, yesterday Dan and I picked up a few supplies for building the cabinet, ($25 for 1/2 in. MDF and some pine strips for facing pieces) and headed over to his buddie's garage to use all of his super cool building tools.



Danny taking off the old frames



Had I known it was so easy, I would've done it before I lugged them out from California in the back of my car!



Sweaty guys buildin' stuff




While I enjoy the Arizona sunset!



The box is complete!



A mock-up with the doors....





Priming for paint...

And that's where we are now. With a perfectly primed, perfectly constructed, perfectly square box. All we need now is to mount to doors, construct a simple shelf, install knobs, hang it in our upstairs powder room, and fill it with T.P. and towels. Oh, and choose a color to paint it. The last item is, of course, the most important. Should we go light or dark? Well, what are the other elements going in the room? I don't know yet!! I asked Danny if I could just live with it for a while in it's primed state untill I get some inspiration/shop for some deals and he is humoring me. He's good to me!