Have you checked out my home tour? Have you ever wondered why there are no pictures of the bathroom? Let me show you the before.
The after? You’ll have to wait until my next post.
Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots. She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden. She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.
Have you ever started a project, only to have it sit for months on end, staring you in the face and taunting you with its unfinished business? Welcome to our entryway.
I applied primer to it in October in a mad fit of trying to make our house look acceptable for a big party we were throwing. The Hermit saw that I was going crazy and talked me out of my painting stupor. The people weren’t coming to see the house, they were coming to see us.
He was right, but they were kind of coming to see the house. I do write a home-lifestyle blog, you know.
Anyway.
Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots. She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden. She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.
This photo pretty much sums up the dining room before:
More wallpaper and kind of boring. We’ve been using the grey, white, and yellow scheme in the house, and thought the dining room was a good place to take some design risks. Enter in some grey paint and crazy yellow accents and voila:
Lately I’ve been seeing designers use strong colours on the trim of the focal window, so I thought I would give it a try. I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with the look, but I’ll live with it for awhile and if I really regret it I can always paint it back to white.
One of the features we love most about this dining room is the swinging door pictured here. We were originally going to take out the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, but later decided against it because we loved the door so much. You can also lock it in place both ways, which is pretty cool!
We also really love the two built in cabinets, although they don’t conveniently hold modern sized plates. We just barely squeezed in the Royal Albert.
I experimented with chalk paint like its actually meant to be used on the hutch. More on that in the next post. I also painted the mirror white because it didn’t seem to really fit in anywhere else in the house. The painting is a $7 find from value village.
It was pretty fun an easy to distress the hutch. I’ll definitely be trying more of it with the bookshelves in the living room.
I’m still not 100% happy with the way things look, but having an actual dining set would help immensely. This grey is also pretty deceiving. In some lights it is bluer than I wanted, so either it or the shade of yellow will change, unless I can magically find some piece of cheap artwork to tie things in better.
What do you think? Is the window frame too bold or just right? Would you switch out the grey? Maybe go with all white and paint our future dining table grey? Or should I stop obsessing and just be happy?
Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots. She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden. She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.
Behold our former living room in all it’s wallpapered glory:
So obviously I’m pretty terrible at before pictures. I’ll try and be better as I do the other rooms. Anyway, after countless hours of scraping wallpaper and popcorn ceiling (still not totally done that), trying to repair walls, and cursing the person who DID NOT primer before wallpapering in 1929, the living room is painted!
Bonus: We finally figured out a furniture configuration that works for us and promotes conversation. I am still planning on painting the bookshelves, but that can wait until I’m done painting all the rooms. I would also love to buy some decorative things, but it’s not in the budget until the other house sells.
I’m in a giant hurry to paint everything because we want to rip out the floors and get new ones in before the snow flies. It also takes time to order the wood and it has to sit in the house for a couple of weeks to acclimatize. But! It will all be worth it to have a house that doesn’t stink!! (There’s pet stains in the wood. Removing the wallpaper has helped the smell, but it is still definitely there.)
As for what’s up next, it’s on to the dining room! Only some minor wallpaper removal there, so hopefully I can get this room done in a week instead of a month.
So, what do you think? Let me know in the comments, and feel free to pin and share if you like it!
Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots. She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden. She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.
I suppose I’ll be painting many more walls in the near future, but this one feels like a triumph. Here’s the progression:
Behold the wallpaper in all its glory!!!
The primed squares are previous spots-of-triumph. The white patches are spots where the plaster wasn’t even because of the water and scraping I had to use to remove the wallpaper. In hindsight, I think I might be able to get away with just sanding those spots flat. We’ll see on the next wall.
First coat of primer done!
Do you like the white? Do you think I should keep it white or go with light grey?
Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots. She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden. She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.
