Inside Color!!

Hart, That's neet. I'll have to save that site.

What a cool site and the prices aren't that bad.

bumping up with photos because we finally finished the painting last week. A friend's fiance took over the job and did very nice work.

The living room is in different tones of purple... silvery lavender on the side walls, dusky plum on the end walls, deep smokey purple for the baseboard and crown molding. I love the way these colors turned out! This is going to be my favorite room for a mid-day reading break on a hot summer day... very cool and peaceful.

We moved some pictures around and also shifted the furniture around. The piano moved to the middle of its wall, making room for another chair in the corner. That also made space to put Grandma's whatnot shelf up in the corner. :-)

Even though the chest of drawers has only been stripped and not yet refinished, I decided it was too pretty to hide away in the corner. So the couch scooted down to make room for the chest toward the middle of the wall. I hide my seed stash away in these drawers... during the winter, the coffee table tends to be full of plates and baggies of seeds. :-)

The massage cushion doesn't really go with the decor, LOL, but it's sooooo nice. I think Grandma's wooden "little dutch girl" shows off really well on top of the dresser. It was one of her favorite pieces, one of two that stayed with her through several moves in her last years. The pussy willow branches came from Theresa's mom. I know there's probably too much "stuff" in these rooms, but it all has a story, and I like that.

And, finallhy,a shot of the dining room. I need to get a photo that shows the colors a bit better and includes the deep/bright rose of the crown molding. The upper wall is a light rose-taupe color, a "pink" that Jim figured he could live with. The baseboard is a deep pine green, and the chair rail is a wonderful burgundy. My preference would have been to do the crown in the same burgundy, but since it took 5 coats to get the chair rail looking decent, it wasn't realistic to pay somebody to do 5 coats on the crown, LOL.

That is just beautiful, I'm coming down I want to see it in person. LOL

Turned out great, Jill!

Excellent - I'm a great promoter of color on the walls, now if I could just have a tidy space to go with the color....sigh

echo sigh.
I have not gotten around to my sponged squares yet, but school's out now and my DD and friend might help. Then we could redo this downstairs floor--been looking at crappy old linoleum squares from 1971 for couple months now.

What a fresh new look and I love the colors! Boring 'scheme' here, white, white and more white :( Rick had no imagination when he built the house but maybe I'll be able to change that when we finally get it painted. After 15 years it needs it badly, it's now more of a "dingy" white :(

Thank you! I just love it. I've taken to walking through those rooms rather than through the hallway when going upstairs. :-)

White & more white is mostly what we've got going on here, also. Ask DH for a wall color suggestion, he'll say "white," and I'll try to tell him that doesn't count as "color." LOL So I got to paint the guest room a few years back, and then he OK'd color in the living room and dining room. That's probably going to be the extent of it -- one of the reasons I went for serious color. The other rooms do have stuff on the walls to brighten them, so they aren't stark.

The dark furniture looks so much better (less heavy) against non-white walls, and the dining room colors are a great match for the roses in the chair upholstery. Now I need to sew up window treatments, but I don't think that's happening for a while... too much going on outside! :-)

Your colors look great, Critter.

I was especially impressed with your living room colors. My daughter in law painted her living room with pewter, muted light sage, and shades of dusky pale and deep lavender and it looks great.

Your colors give the same impression in the room.

Sally, Are you talking about painting your floor?

Critter, your new colors look great! I love your little inlayed chest. A suggestion - consider a rubbed oil finish or a satin poly. Use tung, not linseed oil if you opt for oil. It has such a nice sheen now and the colors of the wood are so pretty. Cabot used to make a nice satin furniture finish that did a good approximation of rubbed oil but I'm not sure if you can find it in the US any more.

Agreed that's a beautiful inlayed piece.

We ripped up carpet and are considering partial hard surface and part new carpet--but recently on TV saw cork flooring, and Marmoleum, that one looks like some new linoelum comes in big pieces to snap together.. Trying to resist pet accidents yet warm up the floor a bit for winter.

I like the cork floors, Ric wants to put one in the kitchen. I wonder how that would do with pet accidents and kitchen spills? My pets are getting aged and young grandchildren are getting numerous. .

They are treated, that's why they are recommended for kitchens. We had it in the kitchen at our former church and they have a school there.

Supposed to be cheaper than hardwood--but what grade of hardwood, ya know how they can spin things.

Yes and I understand that there are different grades of cork flooring, too. I like the look of bamboo flooring and they pass it off as being Green as it is more renewable than hardwood. But I was told that it off gasses formaldehyde. So you really have to do your homework.

Ya, I'd def rather not poison my family.

Here you go, Sally.

http://www.lumberliquidators.com/storelocator/findstorescitystate.cmd

They have bargain hardwood and cork too.

http://www.lumberliquidators.com/

Jill, Love your color selections, that living room does look cool and inviting. I agree white is not an option. Ric

Looks beautiful !!!!!

Thanks, everybody!

The inlaid dresser isn't a family piece... it was a "find" at the Winston-Salem Goodwill a couple of years ago. I believe I paid $50 for it. !! My MIL & her best friend helped me strip it, but migraine issues have kept me from restaining it as planned. I really like the idea of a tung oil finish, to keep more of the tones that are there now... it's a little uneven (depending on who rubbed where how thoroughly while stripping), but it's pretty good, so it doesn't really need new stain.

Cork flooring, huh, I didn't even know they still made it! Takes me back a "few" years :) The house I lived in when I was a teenager was built by a man who owned the local flooring company. I think he must have used the house as a test site because every room had different flooring and every one was unique! All I remember is the cork flooring in the dining room but what I remember most is helping my mother apply the paste wax to keep it shiny and the endless task of polishing with the buffer! LOL

I was on a historic home tour a couple of years ago and the house had a lot of cork flooring especially in the servants areas. They said that it is a quieter floor and was used a lot so you didn't hear the servants walking around all day as they did their chores and served. Especially in the old Men's Clubs where you had a lot of servants bringing drinks and things. I can just see those old guys reading and playing chess.

We are sponging!

Sponge Painting Stripes the Sally La la Way
Read directions once. Wait a week for the details to not seem so important.
Buy glaze, and big, cheap yet sort of holey sponges and blue tape.
Get out the leftover wall paint, and the ancient bottles of acrylic from old crafts and kid projects, some plastic cups and containers, glossy paper plates that your MIL bought (BBQ!) that you didn't really need.
Tape off random stripes. Don't measure and plumb, that slows you down. Hold tape end at top and let the roll plumb it. Just make stripes and space different.
Mix up some leftover acrylic for your tint. Hint- Brown = red, yellow, black. Play with it until it goes from s_it to mocha. Add glaze.
Rip and cut your cheap sponges to simulate the more expensive but really small sea sponges. Wet and wring well. Dab in glaze mix and dab off on plate till you have light coverage.
Start spongeing! Dab until your whole stripe looks about the same. Play till your stripe and your DD's look similar...Or NOT! It looks way cool and modern, just what this crappy old downstarirs needed! Later, take a lunch break and reread the directions to see how many ways you 'messed up.'
We plan to follow with more partial stripes or random rectangles in another tone -As soon as we find some more leftover acryilic paint.

Who needs directions?! Or plumb lines! Go, Sally!

Can't wait to see it!

LOL, Sally way to go. Can't wait for pics.
Did you happen to notice the walls in my bathroom. Not many people have yellow walls with light and dark aqua marine sponge pattern and dark aqua marine sea shell stencils. That's what happens when your daughters tell you that you "must" paint the bathroom and you tell them go ahead but I'm not buying paint so you will work with what we have. LOL
Cant wait to see your project and I bet it will look very nice no matter how you get it done. LOL

Hollyl, I think I saw that color scheme and motif in an unearthed Pompeiian villa. LOL No, maybe that was dolphins and seashells.

Here you go. A little inspiration for the girls and it even has a seashell.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/pompeii/ig/Pompeii/House-of-the-Venus-Marina.htm

Yeah thats just what Holly's bathroom looked like !

See? I'm psychic. LOL

Hart, I love it would make a great addition wonder if I could get Jen to paint that over the towel rack. LOL

Maybe Tatouage has Venus on the Half Shell, the Original Version. LOL

Youz Ladies be crazy, leave me alone with da' stencils, acrylics, and some urethane to seal them. It's way easier than cleaning 20 year old sub floor, because we haven't agreed on a final floor treatment. My epitaph will be, "But he wanted hardwood!" At least I can keep my paint clean for the Grand babies to shuffle about on.:-) LOL Ric

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Something about the broken X chromosome that includes stencil blindness. LOL

Did I tell you about the time my husband pulled out a can of leftover yellow paint and said ...Well, I won't go into it, suffice to say, no woman would think yellow can go just anywhere inside a house???

LOL Ric and hart

I'm thinking I see pink paint in the future????????