Now You See It~ Now You Don't!

Remodel in progress

Ahh, remodeling projects and their snowball effect!  A few months ago we changed our carpet to compressed bamboo floors in a Brazilian Teak color.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them! 

They are much easier to keep clean and bring warmth to the rooms.  Because they are compressed, besides being extra durable, they don't have the traditional bamboo knots, so they look more like a traditional wood floor would. 

One project snowball I was able to avoid was buying all new wood vent covers.  We opted to not add on the cost of flush, built in covers but thought we would buy new wood vents and stain them to match.  Somehow along the way only one of the three vents could be fully removed~two of the vent bases got locked in under the bamboo floor boards.  The cost to undo the mishap wasn't worth the time and further snowballing.

After shopping around I really didn't like the ornate options of the wood vent covers.   So I went back to basics and stained my existing white metal covers with Old Master's Wiping Stain and polyurethaned with Graham's Ceramithane satin finish.

The project was fairly easy.  I sanded the vent covers with a sanding block and dusted them off.  Then I pulled out the best Crayola water paint brush from the kids' art supplies.  It was perfect to fit into the small crevices in the middle of the vent cover and worked with the oil base stain. I applied one coat of wiping stain and let it dry overnight.  The next day I applied a light second coat, but it didn't have to be perfect, because I was able to use the brush marks to help it look like wood grain.  After that dried for 24 hours I applied the topcoat to protect the vent cover from chipping. 

Now my snowball is rearranging the furniture in the living room/office.

before

empty nook



Latest after:







'office' after

reading nook



Do you have an open project that is snowballing and you need help?  Contact me for a ReDesign consultation and I will try to help put on the brakes where I can.

Inspiration~What is Yours?

What inspires you to add or change items and color to a room in your home? 

Daunting thought? It doesn't have to be. In fact you probably have a single item that you just love and it can be the jumping point for finding a new color for the room.  The key is that the new color(s) relate to something in the room so everything fits into place.

We made our basement into a second family room/game room.  Talk about a blank slate!  Here's our inspiration piece:

Keeping the area light, but with color, I used the rug to find the wall, ceiling, trim, accent wall and accessories colors.  Here's how it turned out:

 

The walls' colors are Benjamin Moore's Yellow Squash and Patriot Blue, drywalled part of ceiling is in hazelnut cream (5th wall we'll talk about in another blog). 

This room is one of my examples I can use with clients to show that a color may look beige in the store under florescent lights, but in my actual space the color looks yellow with a very slight hint of peach.  The red (peach) undertones keep the color from looking plain beige or from hollering yellow.

The blue is a very dark blue, but looks lighter and brighter up on the accent wall.  Please see a past post (here) about colors not looking dark on the wall compared to the paint chip.

The color depth on this wall makes the pictures more dimensional than against a lighter color.

Accessories using related colors to the inspiration piece

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inspiration piece

Maintenance free orchid~best kind for a low natural light family room.

So, still daunting to figure out which color direction your inspiration piece can take you?  Contact me to set up a color consultation appointment and we'll make that part of the project easy breezy.

Best~

Jill