Paint Chips & Hardware & Frustrations, Oh My!!

We finally began the remodel on the house last week. I've been putting it off for almost 6 months now. Mostly because we have very tall vaulted ceilings in the front room and the back art space has TONS of stuff everywhere. I've decided to break up this post into two posts. One about the back of the house (aka: the art space) and one about the front of the house and hallway (aka: the living/dining space)

So, We started in the art space. I took everything down and moved things into the kitchen space. I then painted that ugly yellow ceiling in the art space and the burgundy ceiling in the hallway white!!! Nothing to date has been as satisfying as painting those ceilings. It instantly brightened up the space. I'm a firm believer in the fact that most ceilings should be white. (there are a few exceptions on that) Then came the tough decision about the wall color. We had decided on the color number 3 in the “paint by numbers wall picture”. But, after painting the ceiling the color turned out to be to gray, so we needed to pick something else. I was going for a nice gray blue. Not to gray and not to bright blue, but a happy blue color. It took us 7 tries (the seventh color was on another wall, trust me when I say it was electric blue). Eventually we decided on a color called Newport Blue. (number 6 on the wall) It's stunning against the newly painted white trim. Oh yeah... the trim.

First I just want to say that the previous owners were TERRIBLE painters. They didn't care if paint got sloshed onto the trim, floors, or ceilings. Nor did they painting over painters tape and then leaving the tape there. And, in some places the trim was left in it's original primed state where you could see the brush strokes by the factory. Ok... now I'm getting all worked up... calming down. Ok, so we painted all the trim our “Cottage White” color. Much better!

The room is finished being painted, but I still have a huge amount of organizing and decorating to do. My goal is to “let go” of at least 1/8^th of the stuff in this room. I'm very tired of the clutter. My mom and I are planning on doing something to the windows. And, I have some pages from a Victorian clothing catalog that we are going to frame and hang. I'm already loving this space and I can't wait to fully finish it. (before pics on bottom, after pics on top)