HOME INTERIOR DESIGN-LIVING ROOM DESIGN

A three-day weekend loomed, and bossy color's world headquarters was in desperate need of an overhaul. This may be hard to follow, but stay with me...

It all started with the living room drapes. Sigh.


There they are, on the left. I've had a love/hate relationship with these drapes ever since I bought them 4 years ago. Objectively, I love them. In this room, I never really made them work.

But that's another story.

Right now, all you need to know is that I finally decided to have these lovely, oversized drapes cut down into into two pairs for my office. It's happening as we speak. I'm really excited about it.

For those to work, though, I needed a new wall color. Here's where we started:


(Oh my gosh - here's a BEFORE before picture, from right when we moved in, I'd forgotten about that oranger-than-thou accent wall. It didn't last long.)



Back to the recent before -


Hard to believe this is where the magic happens, isn't it? Embarrassing.


I wanted a paint color that would make that wonderful light green fabric - Beacon Hill's Florian, color Ming - look a little edgy. I've been loving the whole Robin's egg blue color craze, so I tested some of those.

Benjamin Moore's 2052-70 Ice blue won out. It was between that and 2051-60 Bird's Egg, but I thought the lighter color ultimately would be better with the drapes. Let's hope.

Anyway, no need to depend on the kindness of strangers when family's coming into town :) Here's my dad, handy with the tape...


...and my brother James (er, Jimmy Riot)...


And me, of course...


Yeah, yeah. Just get me another Diet Coke, wouldja?


Aaaaannnnd the reveal. The close-to-finished product, bossy color's new and improved world headquarters, which willl be even MORE improved by the installation of the drapes in a few weeks.



Aahh. The office will never be this tidy again, so please take a good long look.


And stay tuned.


Note, added 10/14/09: I used Aura paint for this project and had, for the first time, an odd experience with little paint "crumbs" - dried flecks of paint getting caught in the roller and making it onto the walls. Odd. I asked about it on Benjamin Moore's Facebook page, so I'll see what they say...

The challenge: update a tired kitchen without breaking the bank.


The solution: paint - rather than replace - the cabinetry and enliven the space with a bold countertop.


Let's hear it for Formica Microdot! It has a tiny pattern of dots that gives the material a contemporary, almost tech-y feel. This is #6903 Cassis.

I've found that countertops generally fall into two price groups: there's laminate and butcherblock at the low end of the scale (around $40/sf), and then there's everything else - granite Caesarstone, Silestone - at double the price. Lucky for me I didn't have to talk the client into Formica; she's as much a fan as I am.

My client also knew that replacing her cabinets would be prohibitively expensive - and even though they were old, they were in great shape. So we painted them Benjamin Moore's AF-405 Thicket in a semi-gloss finish - that's from their new Affinity Series, which I've been using more and more.

To make the small space feel larger, we used a similar, lighter shade on the walls and ceiling: Benjamin Moore's HC-99 Abington Putty.

We wanted to use Marmoleum on the floor, but for some reason we had a devil of a time finding it in the color we wanted. In the end, we went with regular vinyl tile.

Because my client was ready to buy new appliances, we had an issue over the refrigerator. The new one was taller than the old, so the cabinet had to come out. I've encountered this problem before...my solution is to have the contractor build in some deep, open shelves for platters and low dishes. They're painted the same color as the cabinetry.


In my old condo, we did the same thing when we jammed the fridge into the closet where the washer and dryer used to be. It was really handy, actually.


The client's happy, I'm happy...the kitchen seems pretty happy, too.