My Easter weekend painting projects

Like Jo, I thought this weekend was perfect for getting some painting projects done around the house. I just finished mine a couple of hours ago. I painted 2 bamboo/cane chairs I bought last month at an antiques store. I still need to have the cushion on the white chair professionally upholstered because I want piping detail, and the other I am hoping my mom will make a cover for me. I should have probably waited until spring to do this when I could have sprayed them outside instead of in my basement (no ventilation), but I have no patience. And as a result, my house absolutely STINKS, I am totally nauseous and the cats are all high. The prices you have to pay for interior design...

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

How to find a peacock chair in 4 steps - Part 2

A couple weeks ago Jo posted her fabulous peahen chair she found at her favourite thrift shop. She mentionned that she was on the hunt for a peacock chair. And since seeing the peacock chair in Wary Meyers pad (who are my idols btw), I've been dreaming of having one of my own. So here are my 4 steps to finding a peacock chair.

1 - check craigslist on a daily basis and pray that one day a peacock chair will magically appear.
2 - almost drop dead from shock when an ad for "wicker chair - $20" appears on craigslist and IT TURNS OUT IT'S A PEACOCK CHAIR.
3 - scramble to organize borrowing your parents SUV and contact the seller to arrange a pickup (and seller tells you someone has already been in contact about it and would pick it up Sunday but if you can get there before that, it's yours). Tell him no problem, and you'll give him $30 for it too!
4 - Pick up chair (get extra bonus of meeting seller's albino Great Dane) and thank your father 6 times for driving you across town in traffic to get it.

Busy weekend

I spent the weekend shoveling snow and painting. OH. JOY. Thought I would give you a peak into my new teal dressing room. The colour comes across alot brighter in photos (because sun was shining in the room and glaring off the mountains of snow). It turned out perfect, and I am really happy with the results. Now I can't wait to decorate the room - I have some black and white Jo art and Jocelyn's portrait (photo #2) that will be perfect against the teal.

My ugly kitchen reborn

Note: Due to my painting escapades over the last 3 days, I am behind in my blog posts so this post is not about an architect or designer but about me. I should have my act together this afternoon.

I have a really ugly kitchen. Really. Ugly. And not only is it ugly but the layout is terrible and it's driving me nuts. I am not sure when I'll get around to renovating it so I realized when I was planning to paint the living room that I should just slap some crazy paint on the cabinets to make being in the kitchen a little more tolerable. Turns out I slapped some paint on the cabinets, the island and the backsplash. Not sure how feasible it was to paint tile but I guess I'll just have to be less messy when I cook. I've always wanted pink cabinets and since I now live alone, I figured what the hell. Except I realized Benjamin Moore doesn't make great pinks. I ended up with bubblegum pink. (It's actually called Springtime Bloom). I think I got the effect I was after anyway - a girly kitchen that brings a smile to my face when I see it. So hopefully it's obvious that the first group of photos includes a before on the left and an after on the right. (Note: I had nothing planned to decorate the new pink kitchen with so I ran around the house looking for "props", such as the piece of scrap fabric hanging on the stove as a tea towel, and the curtains are a piece of fabric folded over and clipped.)

Kim's place - some painting going on there too

I have been having a busy weekend too. Like Jo, there was some painting going on here too. I was getting totally sick of the putrid yellow that most of this house is painted and took off to my local Benjamin Moore store yesterday afternoon with a list of white paint and my latest Style at Home mag, where a gorgeous photo of a kitchen painted in Farrow & Ball's Blackened had got me thinking about grey. In the end, grey won out (Misty Gray for walls and Distant Gray for trim). I painted the living room yesterday, except the wall behind the tv that leads upstairs - that's getting painted today (and the upstairs hallway). Some photos are below. (The one with my little teak dresser shows the putrid yellow on the wall in behind.) I've also included one of the baseboards. NONE of the baseboards in this house are painted. So they required 3 coats. And OMG what a difference. The room still needs alot of work...new chairs, coffee table, curtains, pillows, rug etc. etc. but I think it's off to a good start.

I also bought some paint for my kitchen cabinets. That will be a job for my day off tomorrow. Wait until you see what colour I chose. The kitchen is going to be trashed as soon as I get my act together and get renovating, so I thought something a little crazy would help me not hate it so much.