Image Inspiration!

Hello! How's the week treating you? Our dining room has been on our mind a lot lately. Picking the right paint and curtains to match our Restoration Hardware table has been a bit of a challenge. The image above has been the inspiration but to mimic it exactly would make our room a bit too dark.

So, this is our table. It looks a bit more "gray washed" in person even though it's just raw wood. We have some linen and wood chairs that match nicely, also from Restoration Hardware, but that's where it's stopped. The room functions great, but it's a grab bag of styles and it's very unfinished. So where to start...

We hopped on over to another fun tool Glidden has for free online. My Colortopia allows you to upload a photo and pulls colors from their line to help you find exactly what you are looking for. In just a few seconds we found some pretty sweet options. 

We picked the same inspirational photo we have been starting at for months and were trying to find a great grey to use that didn't feel so dense. I am really loving the Glidden Seal Grey!

Have you guys used this tool? What were your results? Did you fall in love with the results on the first try or did you keep editing until you found something you liked?

I have been sponsored by Glidden brand paint to write this post but the thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

Color Hunting

Hello! How has the week been treating you? We have about 20 projects in motion at the same time. We are taking advantage of this above freezing winter as best we can. Lots of time has been dedicated to painting, and picking paint colors....Not only has it been hectic in our own house, but you can read all about the big 'ol Lake House project I am working on with Emily Henderson right here. Emily just picked out the perfect paint pallet for the upstairs of this amazing Lake House and it got me thinking, how does one pick a lot of colors for a lot of rooms and still have it flow? I have played it safe so much with all white while renting, and have been playing around a lot with paint since we moved. 

I have loved this image from fist site (coincidently on Emily's blog right now). I would have NEVER thought dark walls could look so fresh. I mean, I love kelly green, leaf green, any natural green really. And when you mix it with blues, I am sold even more. But this image of the gray and green strikes me because we have a Restoration Hardware wood table with gray tones and this situation is begging to enter my life. 

If you follow my Pinterest Home Inspiration board, you'll notice a pattern, as I recently did. I am drawn to colors in nature mixed with neutrals. Weird what you can learn about yourself when you can visually organize your thoughts!

If you are bold and want to flip the sitch above, below maybe more your bag. 

 

Reality looks a little more like this for us:

We have chosen grays and blues and will be introducing pops of more natural greeny colors. When looking back the color inspiration has come from some many places we have gone. We love the sky in the Caribbean, and blue blue ocean of my home town in south Florida. The leaves of the orange and mango trees in my back yard growing up. They winter gray sky's we now have in New York. And of course we are drawn to the beauty in central park! All that nature and stone mixed in with every glance!

Corny enough for you? It's true! Color plays a part in your life so much. I was excited to find out Glidden now has a fun new tool to help you find your color story! You may recognize a slew of lovely lady bloggers sharing their inspiration while you are there! After I took the 5 minute quiz, I wound up here:

                                  What's your Colortopia?

I have been sponsored by Glidden brand paint to write this post but the thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

Down Down Guest Room

Hello Lovely! Today we are venturing into a room you have yet to see! Downstairs we have a tiny little guest room originally meant to be for a maid or au pair. It's the way to get to the only bathroom downstairs. The whole back corner of our downstairs is a reminder of how freaky things were back in the day. A maids quarters. With a separate entrance and everything. Accompanied by a swing door into the rest of the house. Totally makes me mad. Not that I am against maids or au pairs' or anything like that. Just that this house was built to shove them in a corner with a tiny room. That makes me mad.

With supplies from Cutting Edge Stencil, Behr paint from Home Depot, and two unused paint-brushes from our Purdy three pack, I was ready to conquer another guest room.

If I could take a moment of your time and vent....I am really upset with our Home Depot. We are there multiple times a week. We spend God knows how much money on supplies, and we even do the DIY check out most of the time. You would think we are model customers and would be treated 1/2 decent. Nope. The staff is always rude, like you are disturbing them to open the spray paint cage or don't know how to answer simple questions like "Where are your nails located?". We have been able to push that under the rug because there are only two hardware store by us, and True Value keeps minimal hours sadly. But this time, oh this time, I about had it.

This time, they refused to mix paint for me. They simply wouldn't color match. All four paint employees were too engrossed in their (colorful to say the least) conversation. Three ran and the one left behind refused to color match a swatch. So I picked from the shelf on this project. No matter how rude they have been in the past, at least I left with the product I wanted. Even if 1/2 the time they didn;t mix the paint right. So there. I huffed and puffed. Not happy.

I seem angry today. I promise I am not. Moving along.....I hope you will forgive the photo. It's so tiny it's hard to photograph the room properly. Here she is. Or was...

Just big enough for a daybed. This is a temp bed passed down by Joey's amazing Aunt and Uncle. It's done us well with all the guests we have packing the house each year. I almost want to treat this bedroom like a hallway or a foyer. Like an emergency-guest-back-up-room. I want it to be something you pass through to get to the bathroom, but don't spend too much time it.

I thought to get rid of the icky beige which was a total downer and painted it a crisp super light grey. Then I stenciled the wall (along with help from my friend Duane) across from the bathroom door with a grey a few shades darker. Keep in mind I wanted that color to be a rusty purple. But you know what happened.

The whole bad experience kinda disappeared when I got to work in the room. Dealing with Cutting Edge Stencils in a whole other story. Their products are high quality, current, and their team is so sweet and responsive. Earlier this year we stenciled our bedroom with Large Rabat, and this time we landed on something just as sweet for the downstairs guest room. Welcome, Kagami.

Pretty sweet, eh? This room is far from done. We have a little list for her which includes:

1. Hang Art
2. Find a better bed solution
3. Find and install fan
4. Find one small perfect piece of furniture
5. Dress the windows
6. Style and Accessorize

So what's the deal with the Purdy brushes we were testing out? First off, they clean up awesome with laytex paint. Pretty much good as new. Oil is super hard to work with when it comes to cleaning, but I have to say, it's worth saving the brush after cleaned! I also got a little daring when I realized how well the Purdy brush could cut. Are you ready for this?

I started taping off the room....then stopped. I didn't need to. So the final break down between yesterday's oil based review and today's latex based review is this:

1. Easy to clean, and reusing is definitely an option
2. No stray brush hairs at all. Zip. Nada.
3. Can cut like nothing I have ever used before.

I am not dissin' blue tape, we know we need it for the million other things we need to tape off (like the stencil itself!), but it surely cut the prep time down 75% or more.

So there ya have it! Guestroom #2 in motion, Kitchen in motion, and pretty soon we will be revisiting the dining room!

Do you have a tiny and awkward room in your home? Share photos in the comment section below! We want to see how you dealt with the space!