Kim's long weekend

This is the last day of my Easter weekend (5 days!) and it was fix-up-my-bedroom weekend. Plaster, sand, wait for it to dry, plaster, sand, wait for it to dry.....still waiting.....to hell with it, paint, paint, paint. This went on for 3.5 straight days. I was too impatient to do a great job but it was good enough. You can hardly tell there used to be a closet in my bedroom. Mission accomplished.

Here's a quick glimpse (as I showed you all the other day) of the former room, looking at the mess that used to be the closet (and what a b*tch that was to patch):

I went with a very pale pink on the walls, which turns out to be hard to photograph accurately. I chose BM's Elephant Pink at 25% strength, and BM's Snowfall White for the trim and the floors. I need to give the floor a few days to cure so in the meantime I am sleeping on my DIY couch. Turns out painting laminate floors works quite well. (I plan on replacing all that cheap laminate with hardwood eventually). This morning I put out a few items I hope to use in the new bedroom, to give you an idea of where I'm going with this project. Vintage boho I'll call it - which means I get to reuse alot of junk I already have as I am still trying to pay off my kitchen and funds are reeeeeally low.

Hopefully next weekend I'll be able to move some furniture in there and get out to Ikea to get the rest of what I need (new headboard-less/footboard-less bed frame and bookcases). More photos to come after that happens.

Paint question

Laura wrote us an email with the following:

"I was inspired by this entry to ask you a question. There is a lot of discussion about the perfect white paint, but I have yet to come across a discussion about the perfect off white/cream/beige paint. I know people use it because I see it every so often in Domino. One of the things that I love about Domino so much, is that they talk about paint colors. White is discussed a lot. But, I've noticed that if there is a picture of a space with an off white/cream colored wall, the paint is hardly ever mentioned. If the perfect white is so often hotly debated, why not the perfect off white?

I am really looking for the perfect color for a room in my house that I am working on. Just to prepare you for the picture, we had a terrible water pipe leak and as a result we had to tear down most of the left wall and some of the ceiling. You can see in the picture the new dry wall. Also, our windows are very special. They were made from old telephone pole wood. Every window in the house is some variation of this window. I don't plan on painting the wood or the baseboards. I've already painted one bedroom a robin's egg blue that looks beautiful. I plan on painting the master a light gray (right now it is a horrible yellow). But this room I wanted to do in a cream color. Hopefully, this will be a child's room someday and I want a nice neutral background that will be able to take on blue or pink accent colors. As you can see in the picture the color that the previous owner's of the house used is a beige, but it has a lot of yellow in it, which I don't particularly like.

Here is the room. I apologize in advance for the chaos, but I am still working on the drywall:"

What a beautiful window - and a whole house of them?!?! I am very jealous. I explained to Laura that I had absolutely no experience with off-white, while I always stick to pure white or light grey when I'm looking for a neutral paint colour. My suggestion for a non-off-white would be a light grey as I think it would be really pretty with blue or pink. But I thought I'd throw this out to you guys if anyone has any paint colour suggestions for Laura. What's your favourite off-white or beige?

To paint or not to paint?

Lee-Anne from Toronto wrote us looking for help: "I love your website and thought you might be able to help me with my design dilemma. We recently bought a home that was built in the 40’s that’s a bit of a fixer upper. It has wooden baseboards throughout and lots of wood trim. I am still hanging onto my old furniture but I am sooooo ready to redo this room!! I want to modernise it and add colour and texture!! My dilemma is that in almost all of the design pictures that I see, the baseboards are painted white. My sister has told me in no uncertain terms that I am NOT to paint the wood trim in the house. I am looking for inspiration where people have kept the baseboards a natural colour." Below are some photos Lee-Anne included of her home.

At first I immediately thought "PAINT!!" but if I had such beautiful baseboards and trim, I would be terrified to paint it. So after looking at the photos, I would listen to your sister. But I would get out the paint can for a few things. I would paint out the fireplace (and lose that huge mirror above), the risers on the stairs and maybe the balusters (a photo below shows this). That's it. But keep your walls light and if you were going to get rugs, I'd keep those light too. Or you could go with a warm bright wall colour (see the yellow wall below). So the following are photos of spaces with unpainted trim (except the last one but imagine it's a dark wood).

Better Homes and Gardens	Better Homes and Gardens
Caroline Beaupère	Alexandra Rowley
Todd Oldham	Fox-Nahem
Canadian House & Home	The Selby

James Tse

Cookie Mag

Newsday

House to Home

Jonathan Adler

And to make your decision even harder Lee-Anne, here are some photos of spaces with painted trim, you know, to keep your options open. :)

Gridley + Graves

Thomas Jayne

Design*Sponge

Inspace Locations

Guido Barbagelata

Elle Decor

Nicholas Haslam

Studio Ilse

Claire needs help

Claire emailed us recently in the hopes we could help her out. Here's what she had to say: "I've seen you lend a helping hand to several readers with designing dilemmas and I was hoping for a bit of help myself. I just signed the lease on a wonderful studio-type apartment near Dumbo in Brooklyn. Now I say "studio-type" because it feels more like 3 rooms connected to create a long living space and although I know it has loads of potential, I'm struggling with where to start! Should I paint the entire space one color? If I do different colors for each space will that be too much? What about a gradient going from ochre in the 'bedroom' to a paler yellow in the kitchen? I also have to reckon with my boyfriend's tastes - not that they're bad - but I have to make sure that it doesn't seem to girly or to 'me'. Do you have any pictures in your arsenal that could be inspiring for this project?" Below are a couple photos from Flickr she has of the apartment.

Why Claire, I think I may have found a few photos to inspire the design genius in you! Admittedly, it was a bit tough finding photos of rooms that are connected but have a little bit of a separation with walls. My gut is telling me that bright white all over and working some magic with art and furnishings would be an easy fix. I don't think I would do different colours - the apartment isn't very large and having each space a different colour would make it appear smaller. If you aren't into white (or a light grey, my fav), I would select a colour (I'd keep it light) and then pick the 2 shades next to it on the paint chip - similar to what you are suggesting with the yellow to ochre. I think the subtle change in shade from room to room would have a really nice effect, and would keep the spaces flowing. I am including some photos of different colours in each space as well, in case you choose to ignore me (that's been known to happen). And please folks, leave a comment if you have some thoughts on this. Help a girl in design distress.

William Meppem	Inspace Locations
Aine Clune	Harry Allen
Domino	elledeco

House and Garden

Bauladen

Decormag

stonefox

Elle Decor

Salon

Marie Claire Maison

Jessica Helgerson

Eric Roth

Alexandra Rowley

Light Locations

Colourful reader's home

Aris emailed us and I had to share. "My name is Aris and I come from Greece. Decorating interiors is one of my favourite hobbies. I bought an apartment last year, in the center of Athens city (Greece), very close to Acropolis, and I started decorating it on my own. My budget is very low, so I use a lot of paint! The concept behind this decoration is to create a holiday style apartment right in the city center." The colours chosen work so well together and bring the apartment to life. Just goes to show how much of an effect paint can have. See the full apartment set on Flickr here. Well done Aris!