paint decisions have been made (finally)!

does anyone read the onion? omg. i think it is SO funny. if you have ever struggled with decisions regarding paint then you have to read this article: "Study Finds Paint Aisle at Lowe's Best Place to Have Complete Meltdown". i was laughing so hard when i read it because it is so so true.

anyways, i thought that would be a good lead in to tell you that we've FINALLY made our paint color decisions for the living and dining rooms. we have even bought the paint. this should make me feel more comfortable that these will be our final decisions but we have already bought paint for these rooms and never used it. oh well.

the problem was finding the "right" shade of green for the living room. while our LR is large for the size of our house, we have really dark and wide wood trim throughout. chad wanted a darker green shade while i wanted a lighter shade. in the five years we've lived here we have managed to never paint the walls but to adorn them with about 8 shades of green and two shades of yellow.

the paint swatch collection has actually increased since this picture was taken in 2005. but the wall pretty much looks the same.

we've decided on a two valspar paint colors from Lowe's. Epic for the LR - a dark-ish green/tan color (very similar to the 3rd color on the right, above) and Lyndhurst Estate Cream - a super light creamy-yellow for the dining room. hopefully we'll be painting in a few weeks!

i love unique furniture

recently i found this armoire at a store that refinishes furniture. i think she mostly does the shabby-chic type of look and i'm not totally into that. i like it here and there but the whole house is a bit of an overload for my taste. but i thought this piece of furniture was so cute...i thought maybe for a future baby room or even in the dining room for extra storage. i bought it white and will paint it when i figure out what i really want to do with it. the other day at lowe's i found this burnt orange paint color. it was among their mess-up custom colors. it was only $5 but was the top of the line pain, which saved us like $35. granted we're going to have to prime the hell out fo the armoire, but i'm so excited to see what it will look like (one day!)

Quote of the Week: What happened to your doors?!

We've been asked this question by neighbors a lot lately. No, no one broke into our house. No, our house hasn't been vacated or abandoned (tempting as this may sound). No, we do not prefer the look of plywood to an actual door. I can't blame them for asking - both the door above and our back door to our house looks like this.

Don't worry, it's only temporary. We're having the doors stripped, repaired and repainted. In fact, the door above is already finished.

Above is the door before. I think it was original to the house. However once our door guy had it he said it was beyond repair - large cracks and it was way uneven and slightly warped. So we found a very old similar door to replace the old one (below). We ordered hardware to match the hardware we bought when we bought the house for the portions that were not original when we moved in.

Below is the new old door being stripped and starting to be primed.

Finally, here's the new old door painted and installed. Still needs some touching up with the paint and some scraping along the windows (it was just installed today). It is painted Rookwood Red by Sherwin Williams. Love it.