A New Year Facelift

I have enjoyed every thing about our home since moving in other than the fact that there was no color on the inside. Everything, and I mean everything was chalky white throughout. We have added color starting with the kids bedrooms, the entry way, sun room and office over the past year but the rest of the main floor needed some loving color. Here are some before photos.I have been looking for the perfect color for the formal living room and dining room to go with the decor I have assembled. The color that came out the winner was Valspars' "Tropical Bay" from Lowe's.

This was a 2 day 2 person project that truly rang in the New Year! I also wanted to add some design to the dining area and went with the vertical stripes painted in "Brushed Pearl". The keys to making this part of the project a success were 1) a laser level capable of making vertical lines 2) Frog Tape- I highly recommend this product, there was no paint bleeding under the tape and lines came out crisp and clean. 3) Layout- Take your time and double check before you start painting. The method we used to layout the room was to measure the total length of all walls around the room. We divided this total distance by an even number that would give us a stripe width between 8 to 10 inches. In our case the stripes came out to be 8 15/16" to make all the stripes the same. If we would have made all the stripes and even 9" we would have had 1 stripe only 4 1/2" wide instead of 9". The final phase of this project will be completing the curtains but that will be a project for another day and another post. Here is how it turned out. I am so excited to have this project complete and be able to enjoy this part of our home everyday!