Our house turns 90 next year.
She looks pretty good for her age, huh?
Matt bought this house before we met. He spent the first 4 months he owned the house doing a total rehab of the kitchen… including moving multiple bearing walls, installing cabinets & countertops and repainting EVERYTHING. He loves working on this house.
On my side, I lived in one condo (with my roommate, Ashlee!) where I was able to paint my walls, and I only got through my bedroom (and 3 coats of purple paint on ONE wall) before deciding that the bathroom and hallway were fine just the way they were 😉
Before we started the master bedroom project (one that took almost an entire year, I might add) we committed to making the den habitable so we had a nice place to relax. It was the first room we did together and I loved it.
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| Lamp: Ikea // Side Table: Garage Sale |
Ignore the seat from our car when I snapped these photos & messy media cabinet! But you get the idea.
Even though I love this little room, I could never figure out what to put around the TV that wasn’t distracting. I liked the yellow accent wall but I realized it didn’t serve its purpose of lightening this space up. I also felt like it was a little too matchy-matchy and wanted something different. I think being home for the last several weeks has made me look harder at our house.
I started looking online for inspiration and finally found something on A Beautiful Mess.
Like I said, I am usually trying to avoid doing work on the house, but I was definitely inspired. I showed Matt this blog on Thursday, and we were making a trip to Home Depot on Friday after work.
By Saturday night we were watching a movie in our newly painted room.
I am in LOVE with how it turned out! It looks super bright because I took these photos in the morning… but it brightens the entire space up! Since our wall didn’t have windows like the room on A Beautiful Mess, I decided to space my dots further apart. I also wanted to use metallic paint… it just sounded like fun. We did this wall in less than 24 hours. Here’s how.
1 gallon Glidden Marshmallow White
1 quart of Ralph Lauren Metallic Antique Bullion
1″ flat craft brush (like in this set)
Painted 2 coats of Marshmallow White over my goldenrod yellow wall. I painted the 1st coat Friday night and the 2nd coat Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, I was ready to paint my gold spots.
Now, this was definitely risky — but I did the gold spots completely free form.
I decided that life is too short to worry about little gold dots. I did a practice round on our decaying shed out back and just went for it. The key was using the bottom half of the brush and having a fresh dip of paint with every stroke.
In hindsight, I probably only needed a “sample” size of metallic paint since the dots were single-coat and spaced apart. But I think we’ll find a fun way to use it up.
There are a few dots I might erase at some point… but I think it turned out pretty well! Don’t you think?
Now I’m searching for a new rug (the $20 Ikea rug is being retired to Matt’s office!) and some new pillows.
Even though I typically avoid working on the house, I really enjoyed this project! I think it might have to do with living here for almost two years now and being ready for a change. Now I’m feeling confident and trying to think of ways to add a fun wall to our guest bedroom/my office…. any ideas? Have you ever painted a free form pattern or accent wall?
xo
