Okay, so, the plan for yesterday had originally been to paint the kitchen. I was doubtful about this plan, since there is still some paneling that needs to be taken down and some giant holes in the walls that need to be patched. But who am I to question the helpful locusts? During the week, my aunt and uncle came over to start painting the new bedroom so that we could move out bedroom furniture in and continue the floor installation in the rest of the rooms. They got the entire room painted with the base color and one wall faux finished. All that remained was to faux finish the rest of the walls and we'd be good to go.
Since the bedroom painting was already well underway, we decided to just go ahead and finish that instead. So my mum, my dad, my aunt, and I finished the remainder of the faux finishing while my uncle painted the murder wall with Killz (more on that later). When he was finished with that, he came upstairs and helped us move all the bedroom furniture in to our brand new bedroom!
Plastic bag faux finish
It is so amazing! It's almost like we moved into a new house. Obviously there's still a lot more to do in there: new curtains, new bedspread, new decor pieces - you know, all the fun stuff. But even now it just looks so awesome, it felt like we were sleeping at a hotel.
Let me take a minute here to talk about the faux finish. If you have looked through my bedroom inspiration board, you have probably seen this picture:
http://www.elledecor.com/image/tid/5990?page=7
I decided these blue and green Moroccan walls were the walls I wanted. We used this plastic bag technique:
which I think worked out really well. Obviously, we used blues and greens instead of browns, but the process was the same. I think our knockoff walls look really close to the inspiration picture.
Now, on to the kitchen. Some of you may already be aquainted with our murder wall, but for those of you who aren't - let me introduce you:
Standing in front of the murder wall!
Scary, right? We had originally hoped to strip the wood of the wainscoting and stain it, but it quickly became apparent that it would not be possible. This happened months, maybe even years, ago and we've just been living with it ever since. But no more! The murder wall has now been covered up (to some extent):
No more murder wall!
It's far from finished, but even this little change has made our kitchen a less terrifying place. Now it can be easily painted over when we do get around to starting the kitchen.
But that's not all - there was another small addition to our kitchen:
Our newly extended kitchen table!
Since I hosted New Year's Day dinner, we needed more space to seat everyone - so my parents brought over the leaves for our kitchen table! Hooray for more makeshift counter space! Again, it's not a huge change, but it makes a very big visual difference in the room. Chris and I are both really excited to be able to have a centerpiece and still have room to eat. Unfortunately, the leaves make it even more obvious how much our table desperately needs to be refinished:
Regular table vs shiny, unused leaves.
When my parents had this table, the leaves usually sat in the basement unless there were a lot of people coming over. So they saw a lot less use and as such retained a lot more of their youthful glow. Ah well, someday. But refinishing the table is not high on my priority list, so for now we will just have to deal with it.
So yeah, I feel like we got a lot accomplished yesterday. It was a great way to ring in the new year. Stay tuned for floor updates, bedroom updates, and an explanation of my plans for the kitchen.
...with some home improvements! I am too tired to update fully right now, but here's a sneak preview of what we (me, Mum, Dad, Aunt Candy, and Uncle Don) got accomplished today:
