The Lived In Room

Its transition time around here. I've been "sitting" with our living room in a mess to get an idea of what I want and where it's all gonna go. We've been moving furniture in and out, deciding on colors to paint the furniture, looking at fabric choices. This is where we are so far.

The sofa, ottomans, rug and mirror stay where they are. Everything else is standing in for something that either doesn't exist yet, or is being painted. The chair over by the mirror is staying, but it currently stripped down to it's cushion. It used to look like this.

My friend found it for me at a thrift store for $25. The fabric was stained and dry rotted so all of it came off last night. Which means I have to learn how to reupholster a chair (fingers crossed) so I don't have this sitting in my living room for long.

We also found these end tables at the same thrift store for $15 each. They did have marble inserts in the top, but one was chipped and we broke the other in the thrift store parking lot. I'm having pieces of glass cut to replace them, and plan on putting some kind of decorative paper under the glass. The pedestal table is from Home Goods for $40 and is getting the same coat of paint as the other tables to help unify all 3.

This is in the middle of painting them. The white is primer and the green is actually my kitchen cabinet color with white mixed in to make it a little lighter green.

We still have a long way to go but I'm enjoying the little DIY projects to make this living room unique and all my own.

Painting Cabinets

I was really nervous about painting my kitchen cabinets. My biggest fear was them ending up with brush strokes and drip marks and look painted, and they didn't! But I also knew I was not willing to spend thousands of dollars on new cabinets. I read a couple tutorials online, including this one from Young House Love. I relied mostly on the guys from my local Sherwin-Williams for picking out the paint and tools.

TOOLS

I used a 1.5" angled brush for the crevices

of the cabinets, and 4" foam rollers for a smooth finish.

I don't know much about this primer and paint

but it's what the paint guy recommended.

The primer covered really well and the

paint went on nice and smooth.

PREPPING

I removed all the cabinet doors and numbered

them so I wouldn't forget which went where.

I removed all the old nasty

hardware from the doors.

Ladies, if you don't have a mini electric

screw driver, GET ONE! My husband's

is way too big for my hands, and this

little guy was a God-send for this project.

I set up some make-shift saw horses in our garage.

I would highly recommend this.

You're going to spend a lot of time with these doors,

so save your knees/back and get them at a good

painting height for you.

Also, since the doors will be drying for days,

you'll want to protect them from the weather.

TID BIT

I started with my doors front side down on the saw horses with the idea that when I flipped them, if the paint smudged, it would be on the back of the door and not the front where it would be more noticable.

SAND

After I had all of this set up I was ready to either completely ruin my cabinets or end up with a beautiful kitchen. I did a light hand sanding with a 80 grit sandpaper block. The goal with the sanding is to gently rough up the surface so the primer adeheres the best it can. I did not spend a lot of time or effort on this. Just a couple swipes then used a damp clothe to remove the sanding dust.

PRIME

With my 1.5" angled paint brush I first did a light coat of primer in all the angled partions of the doors. I then went back with my 4" roller and covered the entire door. The foam roller would not work to get into the little crevices, but the paint brush does not apply as smooth of a coat. So using the brush first and the roller second gives great covered and a smooth finish. The goal is a light even coat. It's tempting to apply a lot of primer (or paint) to cover better, but this will end up looking splotchy and uneven. Resist the urge and I promise you won't regret it.

Door backs covered with one

coat of primer.

After the door backs were covered in primer, I primed the boxes of the cabinets. This gave the doors a chance to dry a little before applying the paint. I used this back and forth method for each coat of paint also. The primer recommended waiting an hour, but it was the next day before I was able to apply the first coat of paint.

PAINT

I used the same brush-then-roll method for the paint. With the first coat of paint the primer was still showing through. Not only was the primer showing through, but the paint color looked much lighter than it was supposed to. Not to worry, it gets better.

After the backs were covered in 2 coats of paint (about an hour to dry in between) I let them dry for 2 days before flipping them over and repeating the whole process. I did NOT want my beautiful paint job to stick to the saw horses, so this is where patience came in handy (and I'm not a patient person). This is also where your couple of light coats of paint, instead of thick coats, come into play. It would take so much longer for the paint to dry.

FREAK OUT

At about this stage in the process, my husband decided to tell me the green looked like "that 70s color green." You mean AVOCADO GREEN?? This was after 6 hours of painting on Sunday night. And I had a complete melt down over my color choice. Avocado green was definitely not my goal. I was VERY particular about the color green this was supposed to be, thanks to my inspiration kitchen.

I chose Dried Thyme, from Sherwin-Williams.

DEFINITELY NOT AVOCADO GREEN.

So I sat in the kitchen and cried while surrounded by my avocado green cabinets. I looked at them from different angles, different lights turned on, upside down, right side up. Anything to see another color besides AVOCADO GREEN. Finally, like a good artist, I gave up for the night and hoped to see something different with fresh eyes in the morning.

Hmmm, nope, these were still very yellow cabinets the next morning with fresh eyes and fresh light. Then, some how, I realized it was the inner cabinet color that was completely throwing off the green. The inner cabinets are a yellowish/orange wood color that was pulling all the yellow from the Dried Thyme. So I grabbed some cabinet doors and placed them as they should be and WA-LA! No more AVOCADO GREEN! It's amazing how a little thing like that can completely screw the color. See how NOT AVOCADA GREEN the cabinets are?

Moral of the story, don't freak out.

BEFORE AND AFTER

I Just Can't Stop

I might have a serious problem. Is there a 12 step program for decorating addicts? We finished our kitchen 2 weeks ago and tonight we went out and bought a new sofa. Yep, looks like we will be doing the living room next. Everything in our living room is about 6 years old. The sofas are getting ratty (want to buy them?) and we just don't like the set up. I've always had a vision for something much more custom than an "L" shaped sofa setup like we currently have. I know exactly how I want it to look, now I just have to find all the pieces to put it together.

Current living room setup.

(with the old floors and old kitchen)

This is the exact sofa I had imagined

for my living room. And somehow

I managed to find it at a

decent price at Macy's.

I imagine a huge floor mirror, a couple side chairs, a thrift store find TV stand that I can paint, some small side tables and a couple lamps. Oh, can't wait!

We're Home!

We finally made it back to Orlando! On Friday we were supposed to get 2 inches of snow in Waynesville. Ended up being about 12 inches. We were supposed to leave Saturday morning but with our cars stuck and the 1/2 mile driveway iced over we had come to terms with staying until it was safe to drive again (possibly Tuesday). Fortunately we were able to hire a snow plower to plow the driveway and we all got out about 3:30 Saturday afternoon. Driving down the icy mountain was definitely the scariest drive of my life. I'm a FIRM believer in guard rails! Of course there were not any where we were driving. But we made it out alive and we're back in not-so-sunny Florida.

We had to leave my car

at the end of the driveway.

Rear wheel drive and slick

roads don't get along.

This was about 2pm Friday.

Saturday at 10:30. We went back

down the drive to find the snow plow

guy and check on our cars.

The in law's car slid off the road

on Friday. That's when we

figured out we had a real problem.

Saturday we found my car a bit snowy.

Thank you for whoever

left the orange cone.

It's good to be home and good luck to all those suffering through this winter storm.

Moments In Nature

Have you ever had one of those moments that God becomes so very real to you? For me, this normally happens when I'm experiencing something in nature. During this vacation to North Carolina, I've been lucky enough to have two of those moments. Both times were early in the morning when the house was still quiet and I was all by myself. And I was lucky enough to catch them on my phone so I can relive them over and over again.

The first moment was our first morning in the cabin. The clouds and fog were moving together, so not only was the view of the valley breath taking, but so was nature moving through it.

The second moment was this morning. It had snowed all night and this was our view. Same valley as the video, but completely breath taking for a different reason.