One thing we don’t have much of around the house (yet) is wall art. Actually, come to think of it, there are only TWO pieces of art hanging on the walls in the entire house (the Rare Prints sign in the living room and the Richmond Destination print in the hall bathroom). That’s it. I think it’s because our “vision” is just starting to come together. In my head, art is kind of like the “icing on the cake” to a room. So, it will all come together in due time.

A while back, we mentioned that we moved the antique green dresser from the foyer to the laundry room. Right now, it’s pretty much empty and the drawers don’t slide out very well (we’ve got a solution to that though). But once it’s organized and functional, it’s going to be our “central hub” for outgoing mail, keys, Bentley’s leash, etc. We’re planning on using the lower drawers for things like extra batteries, light bulbs, small tools, etc. Organization = awesome, so I’m pretty excited about it.

Over the “hub”, we want to do a small gallery wall made up of things that are special to us and tell the story of our little family. Things like our marriage certificate, a few wedding and honeymoon photos, Bentley (of course!) and maybe a baby photo or two. After reading this, my cousin texted me asking if she needed to start planning a baby shower. Um, noooo! To clarify, I meant baby photos of me and Greg, haha! Whoa. Okay, moving on… I used Photoshop to show Greg was I was envisioning, and this is what I came up with…

We’ve mentioned it a few times, but the very first thing we did once the house was ours (besides gutting the hall and master bathrooms) was paint every single nook and cranny. The other day, I came across my and Greg’s paint shirts. Now that the house is completely painted, they’ve just been sitting in the closet. Even if we were to do some major painting again soon, these shirts are worn out and and ready to retire.

Over our many weekends of painting, we had a lot of fun, and the shirts kind of tell the story…. Like when we painted the front door, for some reason the song, “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic was going through my head and I couldn’t stop singing it. So Greg drew a heart on my shirt with the red door paint. And when we spilled oil-based primer all over the floor in the foyer, I was trying to clean it up and had it all over my hands. So naturally, I planted a handprint right in the middle of Greg’s stomach. The back of my shirt has my little brother’s initials as well as handprint on it – and a huge roller mark that he thought was hilarious. The stories go on and on… like Rose’s heart… on the Titanic.

I actually got a little teary because I felt like they were a big piece of “us” and our first steps into the world of home-ownership. Is that weird? I wasn’t about to get rid of them, but I didn’t want to have them stashed in the closet forever either. So, I decided to get a little crafty.

I cut out a section of each shirt and taped the pieces taught into a 2-opening Pottery Barn fame (that we originally had on our photo ledge in the bedroom of our first place). A few minutes later, we had the first piece for our gallery wall…

Cute, right? I really like the way it turned out, and it makes me happy every time I walk by it. It looks almost like abstract art!

Oh, yeah… the little owl. I’m constantly fishing change out of the washing machine because Greg leaves it (and guitar picks) in his pockets. So I got this little owl bank (here from ZGallerie) to have a place for Greg to put his loose change when he comes in the door. The next things on the list are a dish for keys, a hook for Bentley’s leash, and, of course, more frames and fun things to put in them.

Since beginning our house renovations about a year ago, we’ve been in and out of many, many hardware stores, True Value being one of our favorite stops. Our local True Value has the feel of an old-fashioned hardware store but with all of the modern conveniences. It’s one of those places where “everybody knows everybody”, but they’re happy to get to know new people, too. Pretty much anyone who walks in knows the owner by name, everything is where you’d expect it to be, and the staff enjoys getting to know you and hearing about the projects you’ve planned for the weekend. All in all, True Value makes us happy. So when we got an email from True Value asking if we would like to test drive their new EasyCare Platinum Paint & Primer. We said, “Yes, please!”.

After a little bit of going back and forth, we finally decided on a lovely dark gray color, Forbidden (09D7) in semi-gloss. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Well, what are you going to paint?” Normally, you pick out what you are going to paint then you pick out the paint color. However, in this case, we did things kind of backwards. We knew we wanted painted side tables for the guest room, and we knew what color we wanted. It was just a matter of finding the right side tables. After a few weeks of searching, we finally lucked out and found these two side tables at Home Goods:

They aren’t as large as we had hoped for – though now that we are planning on sconces rather than table lamps on either side of the bed, we don’t need anything very large – but they’re tall compared to everything else we had been finding, and we like that. The price wasn’t too shabby either. They were originally $200 a piece, but were marked down to $72. Score!

Immediately after opening the can, Greg said, “Wow, that’s good stuff!”. Since buying the house, we’ve primed and painted every single inch of the ceilings, walls, and trim of this 2,115 square foot house. That’s a lot of paint! At this point, we feel like we know a good quality paint when we see one and this was definitely one of them.

There are a lot of cool things about True Value’s Easy Care Platinum Paint & Primer including a lifetime warranty, it’s low VOC, and stain/mildew resistant. What really appealed to us even before we opened the can was that it is paint and primer all in one.

Let me go off on a tiny tangent here and say that we’re not a huge fan of two-in-one products most of the time. Take shampoo & conditioner combinations for example… it does the job, but the results aren’t nearly as good as using a good shampoo and a good conditioner, separately. Well, that was not the case with this paint. We were truly amazed by the coverage. Here’s what the table looked like after only one coat…

Yep… ONE. Greg and I think that’s pretty impressive, especially putting a dark color on top of a light color. The coverage was so awesome that we probably could have stopped there but we decided to go ahead and apply a second coat just for good measure.

While we were having fun with our new paint, Bentley was off in the corner, not very happy with the fact that we were painting rather than playing fetch. This is his “Are you done yet?” face:

Back to the project… We let the paint dry for a good 48 hours before we put the side tables in place, and we also changed out the wooden drawer pulls for something a little more sparkly:

A few books, a clock radio, a small silver frame, a candle-holder-turned-vase, and a few hydrangeas later and we’re in business!

We are really pleased with the finish of the EasyCare Platinum Paint & Primer. We can already tell the surface will be very durable and have great washability. The rich gray color is absolutely yummy. I wonder if True Value would be interested in making nail polish… ; )

In the frame is one of my favorite photos from back in the day of me and my Grandma blowing bubbles. We plan on using some more old family photos around the room in the future and we thought this would be a great place to start.

With the help of our friends at True Value, these side tables have undergone a big transformation and we’ve added a new favorite product to our list in the process. It’s amazing how just a few coats of paint can totally transform a piece of furniture.

Now how about that nail polish? ; )

We’ve been thinking for a while that we should probably get around to sharing our paint colors. We’ve mentioned it here and there but never got around to writing an entire post dedicated to all things paint. However, for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been getting a lot (and we mean a lot) of emails and comments asking about the paint colors we used, so we thought it was probably time to put everything into a single, concise post.

Let’s start off with the most lived-in area of the house thus far…

Seeing as how the kitchen, living room and dining area are all open to each other, we decided to keep things simple and use only one paint color, Martha Stewart’s Cobblestone. Because this area is considered to be a “high trafficked area”, we used a satin finish paint. Being able to wipe the walls down with a damp rag without having to worry about taking off the color (as flat or eggshell paints can sometimes do) was something that we valued very highly.

We decided to carry the Cobblestone color into the foyer and down the hallway. Speaking of the hallway; it was one of our first-time-renovator blunders (read more about that here). In summary, we started out using the color in a satin finish, just like the rest of the house. After three (THREE!) full gallons of paint, something still wasn’t quite right, so we switched to a flat finish. What we didn’t know before we started painting is that a flat finish tends to hide imperfections or slight texturing. Thankfully, the flat paint worked as advertised, and now we have a nice, blank canvas awaiting wall art of some sort.

Another place we used Cobblestone is in Greg’s office. Greg’s office is, like every other room in the house, is still “in the making”, but we are using the colors in the Abacus wall art as our starting point. We love how the medium gray walls serve as a good base for the soon-to-be pops of color. It really helps bring out the individual colors but at the same time doesn’t make them stand out too much. We are also loving the contrast of the bright white furniture. So far, so good.

In the laundry room and the guest bedroom, we used another Martha Stewart color, Artesian Well.

We love the light, airy color and look forward to working with it when we further “embellish” both of these spaces.

The third and final paint color we used is Restoration Hardware’s Slate. We chose this paint color for my office because it’s open to the living/dining area and we wanted to choose a paint color that would flow well but different enough to define the space.

We l-o-v-e this paint. Not only is the color yummy, but the exclusive Restoration Hardware finish, Subtle Velvet, is too. We loved the outcome so much that we decided to use it in the other end of the house in the master bedroom, as well.

Though this room is really sparse at the moment (we’re still negotiating bedding, wall art, etc), the warm paint color really helps in “cozying up” the space.

Even though we love all of our paint colors, we also love the fact that isn’t permanent. With a gallon or two of a new color and a few hours, you can totally transform a room. We aren’t thinking about changing up any paint colors as of yet, but we’re definitely going to remember that fact if we have the urge to paint again — and I’m guessing that isn’t going to be anytime soon.