Before and After: Upstairs Accent Wall

Today is already Thursday, and it is getting closer and closer to moving day on Sunday!  My apartment is full of boxes just waiting for the U-Haul.  I am definitely ready to move to our new house!

Jason and I finished painting on July 3rd, and I admit that I'm a little behind on updating the blog.  So today I've decided to take a break from packing (I'm almost finished anyway) and show you how our accent wall in the open Living Room and Kitchen turned out upstairs.

Before:  A very white wall... 

After:  That's much better...

 

 The color we used for our accent wall is Dutch Boy Dimensions' Shiitaki with a satin finish.  What a difference a bit of color makes!

Here's a picture of the other color we used in the open Living Room and Kitchen area upstairs in our house (Dutch Boy Dimensions Bamboo with satin finish).  We also used the Bamboo color downstairs in our family room, the extra bedroom downstairs, the foyer and the upstairs hallway.  That's a lot of Bamboo!  It's such a nice rich and creamy color that brightens the walls.

 Our project for last night was to put up some curtains over our patio door. 

The curtains we picked up at Bed, Bath, & Beyond were a steal on sale and the Khaki color compliments both the counter-top in our kitchen and the Bamboo color on the other surrounding walls.  

It's definitely time to move in now.  Everything is ready.  All we need are our belongings and ourselves!   

Before and After: Painting the Family Room

Here's a shot of our Family Room in the basement before we painted.  I don't know about you, but two words come to my mind when looking at this before shot:  Blindingly white.  A "wee" bit of color was definitely needed.

And now, the after shot...

Those of you who know me, know that green is my all-time favorite color.  So I thought why not bring  it downstairs to our Family Room?  Jason and I have a couple names for my very green accent wall.  These names are "The St. Patty's Day wall", "The Shrek wall," and the best name may be "The six ball wall" because it looks like the green on the #6 pool ball.  Overall, I'm in love with how it turned out after two coats on each color.  And believe me, one coat of the dark green was not pretty and had us thinking..."Oh no!  What did we do?" 

If you like the colors we used, find your local Home Improvement Retailer that sells Dutch Boy Dimensions Paint.  Dutch Boy is a family favorite because my Grandpa used to sell it in his paint and framing store many, many years ago.  Even after all these years, we remain firm believers that you can never go wrong with Dutch Boy paint!

The Palette Used in our Family Room:  

Large Accent Wall Color on left:  Repurposed (Satin)

Top Right Wall Color:  Bamboo (Satin)

Bottom Right Wall Color:  Cargo Pants (Satin)

Do you have a painting project that you are about to tackle?  Here are a couple very valuable tools that we found we cannot do without!          

 

This Handy Paint Pail is the neatest invention for painting.  This cup is amazing to use when working on trimming.  Compared to holding a coffee can or margarine container full of paint for trimming the Handy Paint Pail not only has an easy-to-grip handle, but it also has a magnet by on the inside of the pail that magnetizes to your brush and keeps it in place.  And of course, who doesn't like paint liners?  These paint liners fit perfectly in the Handy Paint Pail, and the liners are oh-so-easy to throw away after using!  No clean up required, besides washing your paint brush of course.  These are two must haves for any painting project!

Curious about how the painting in the other rooms of our house have turned out?  Well we are almost completely finished painting.  Stay tuned for more updates!

In the meantime...

Happy Painting!