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I am no interior decorator
Jul. 20th, 2015 09:28 amYesterday I cracked open the paint samples we have and started testing them on the walls in Gwen's room, downstairs, and our room. I'm doing three samples of each -- on the wall opposite the window, on the wall parallel the window, and on the wall with the window, and in varying arrangements of next-to and not-next-to each other, so that hopefully we can get a good sense of the possibilities.
Gwen has repeatedly request red with dinosaurs for her room, so we picked out two different shades to try for her; I was worried that, because her room is pretty small, the red might be too overpowering so since we also had an orange, I figured I'd try that too:
I'm pretty sure we'll end up with the center one ("flame"), possibly with one accent wall in the orange. She'd also asked for dinosaur wallpaper, but we don't want to deal wallpaper, so we compromised with these decals.
We had five different colors picked out for the livingroom, one of which we thought we be pretty close to the current color (a short of greenish-mint), which I'd actually be happy sticking with. We were surprised by all five: None of them were what we thought they would be, and I think we'll be going back for variations on each of them, some lighter, some darker, some greener, some purpler.
This photo doesn't really capture them well (I was taking them with my phone), but it DOES illustrate an idea we were playing around with semi-jokingly last night -- which would be what if we took one wall, divided it up into squares roughly that size, and painted every square something different? That could in fact be really, really cool.
We tried the purple upstairs, but I only had time to do the wall with the windows (i.e., the darkest wall) before we had to head back home, and on that wall it turned quite dark. However, we're still thinking it, or maybe a slightly lighter tone, will work, especially since our two wardrobes are unstained pine, we've picked light-colored oak for the floor, and in the afternoon the room gets a lot of sun. I also had had a very deeply held, quiet thought that doing something with gold in the bedroom would be amazingly awesome, but I didn't even bother saying anything about it because I knew the idea wouldn't fly. Then last night, Joel suggested that maybe one way to lighten up the purple would be if we got a stencil and did a band around the base above the skirting and a band around the top, something plant-like or leafy, in gold. This could be very cool.
The other idea I had, a combination of the "paint with gold" and "checkerboard" ideas, is to find a single accent wall, maybe in the hallway upstairs, and do a pattern of checks in blue, red, and gold, with whitework, so mimic the diapered background of a 13th-14th C initial (like the backgrounds here).
We are still utterly stuck on how to do the kitchen. I think ultimately Saturday we're going to spend 5 hours travel time to get to and from the show room of the place we're ordering our cabinets and worktops from to see their selection in person. Toting Gwen. Ugh.
Gwen has repeatedly request red with dinosaurs for her room, so we picked out two different shades to try for her; I was worried that, because her room is pretty small, the red might be too overpowering so since we also had an orange, I figured I'd try that too:
I'm pretty sure we'll end up with the center one ("flame"), possibly with one accent wall in the orange. She'd also asked for dinosaur wallpaper, but we don't want to deal wallpaper, so we compromised with these decals.
We had five different colors picked out for the livingroom, one of which we thought we be pretty close to the current color (a short of greenish-mint), which I'd actually be happy sticking with. We were surprised by all five: None of them were what we thought they would be, and I think we'll be going back for variations on each of them, some lighter, some darker, some greener, some purpler.
This photo doesn't really capture them well (I was taking them with my phone), but it DOES illustrate an idea we were playing around with semi-jokingly last night -- which would be what if we took one wall, divided it up into squares roughly that size, and painted every square something different? That could in fact be really, really cool.
We tried the purple upstairs, but I only had time to do the wall with the windows (i.e., the darkest wall) before we had to head back home, and on that wall it turned quite dark. However, we're still thinking it, or maybe a slightly lighter tone, will work, especially since our two wardrobes are unstained pine, we've picked light-colored oak for the floor, and in the afternoon the room gets a lot of sun. I also had had a very deeply held, quiet thought that doing something with gold in the bedroom would be amazingly awesome, but I didn't even bother saying anything about it because I knew the idea wouldn't fly. Then last night, Joel suggested that maybe one way to lighten up the purple would be if we got a stencil and did a band around the base above the skirting and a band around the top, something plant-like or leafy, in gold. This could be very cool.
The other idea I had, a combination of the "paint with gold" and "checkerboard" ideas, is to find a single accent wall, maybe in the hallway upstairs, and do a pattern of checks in blue, red, and gold, with whitework, so mimic the diapered background of a 13th-14th C initial (like the backgrounds here).
We are still utterly stuck on how to do the kitchen. I think ultimately Saturday we're going to spend 5 hours travel time to get to and from the show room of the place we're ordering our cabinets and worktops from to see their selection in person. Toting Gwen. Ugh.
