The Newmans

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Dining Room

     Last month we began working on our dining room again. We finally found a large, wooden, country table (no chairs yet). I'm not much of a "set" girl. I don't like buying matching sets, I think it lacks personality, especially if it matches perfectly. 
    We wanted an accent wall in our dining room to breakup the color flowing form the living room and searched forever for the right shade. Our living room and dining room basically share the same space so I wanted the colors of each room to compliment each other without matching. Our living room is painted in Behr's Pebble Path with Peacock Tail as the accent wall. 
        After many samples we went with Sherwin Williams' Hazel for our dinning room. It's a beautiful blue green.


       This picture really doesn't showoff the beautiful color. In person it has a green hint to it, unlike the pictures that looks baby blue. We also threw out the accent wall idea and painted the entire dining room, which looks really great. It's a cozy little nook now. Next on our list for this room is a rug and some chairs.



Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Laundry Room Makeover

         What can I say about our Laundry Room. It was sloppily painted a greenish tan color and the grout was black. It looked dirty all the time, no matter how hard we cleaned it. Finally, after a year of living in our house we decided, it was time! So, last weekend hubby and I put on our painting clothes and got working.



         You can see the before picture of the laundry room here. You can also see where we started to paint the grout.

      
         This is the wall across from the washer and dryer. It's been our paint sample wall for the entire house for the past year. My Dad loves it - looks like camo! ha-ha!
       I searched for awhile before I found a color I liked for the laundry room. I didn't know if I wanted to go bright, funky, dark, warm, cool...etc. I had no direction. But I was craving some chocolate...I guess hormones played a huge role in this decision LOL! I narrowed our choices down to Behr's Country Club, Milk Chocolate and Oakwood Brown. We both liked the darker color, Oakwood Brown, figuring we really couldn't pull off such a color anywhere else in the house. Yes, we broke an assumed rule for dark colors and small windowless rooms. Oh well! :-)

      
        This is the moment I started to doubt my decision. I knew the walls would look extra dark until the cabinets were painted and the washer and dryer were added back. But I still couldn't shake the doubt. My hubby kept reassuring me. He saw it. He had the vision locked in his mind and never doubted the process. The brown highlighted the dirty grout and messy painted base boards and made the cabinets look super orange. As with every room we makeover I told myself repeatedly , "It's just paint, you can always repaint." 

 
       
        After the walls were painted, we began working on the cabinets. We took down the doors and set them up in the garage. We rubbed a liquid deglosser on the frame and each door. Then, we painted two coats of primer with a roller made for painting cabinets. The next day I painted two coats of white interior acrylic paint. Never use oil paint - it turns yellow over time. Once all the painting was complete we purchased a few decor items to finish off the room.

        We even got a new key holder for our dog's leashes behind the door. What an upgrade from simple nails!  We found a cute laundry room sign and a lovely large flower print for the wall across from the washer and dryer that reads, "A walk in the flowers" in french. As you can see, we also put on new crisp white face plates for the light switch and electric sockets. 


       We also got a runner to warm up the space. Look at the clean crisp floors and base boards! :-) 


Cabinets before and after


          The final look with new hardware on the cabinets. The only thing we have left is crown molding (eventually) and a wall inlay that allows the dryer to be pushed back a few inches. :-)


Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Update!

I'm not sure where I left off. As you know renovations and makeovers cost money, so they come in seasons. It's been a long break but we are back at it. One of the major investment we made during this breaks was having our attic insulated. Thankfully we didn't procrastinate and got it finished before the big freeze this year. We also painted our dinning room and made over our laundry room. I'm excited to share these transformations. Along with our master bedroom and my office.