My Creative Blog:
Paint Colors

I've already confessed to you that yard work is not really my thing. I pay way more attention to the inside of my house, and tend to neglect the outside. Unfortunately, my hubs isn't really into working outside either. But, I started to feel really bad for our neighbors because the front of our house was sooooo not welcoming. A few years ago, right before my daughter was born, I had Kevin paint the shutters and front door of our home a nice neutral brown. It was a major improvement over the faded blue that was there when we bought it, and for awhile, I liked the look. But not anymore. Now that I know what style I'm going for in my house, it wasn't fitting the bill. Not unique enough, not coastal/cottagey enough and not"me" anymore.

Oh did I forget to mention that we also have a jungle of a flower bed right outside our front door? Ugh. This flower bed is the bane of my existance. It's very large and overgrown with weeds. I figured that if we were going to add some curb appeal, the weeds had to go. We'd really like to put some low ground cover (suggestions, anyone?) in the entire bed so that we don't have to worry about it too much, but for now, we did some much needed cleaning out.

Our house is only about 15 years old, but the paint was peeling badly on the columns, so we added that to the facelift list.

It really just didn't scream,"Hi! Come on in!", did it?

I had slowly been accumulating paint chips to find the best front door color, and finally narrowed it down to Deepest Aqua by Glidden. Since I got my paint at Home Depot, I had them color match it for me in Behr Ultra Exterior Paint + Primer (you can see the code below, if you're interested!). I chose Behr Ultra Exterior Paint +Primer in Dark Granite for the shutters. No joke, this paint was amazing! It went on soooo smooth and covered really well on the first coat. I highly recommend it! We ended up only doing two coats, and they look perfect.

All of the trim on the porch and both columns got a fresh coat of white paint, as well.

I'm so impatient that I had to snap a picture of the house after the door was painted but before the shutters were painted. Loved it immediately. That blue is spot on and the perfect color for my front door.

I had Kevin take the door knob off because it had seen better days, and sprayed it with a dark bronze hammered metal spray paint. What? You don't spray paint on an old tree stump? Why ever not?!: )

That simple step made a world of a difference, and was free, since I had the spray paint already. Score!

After weeding, painting, spray painting and a lot of sweating, here's how the house looks now:

The house feels more calm to me, if that makes any sense at all. And the colors make our house look more white, when actually it's an off-white, pale yellow. I'm a big fan of that, as it was completely unplanned!

We didn't take down our shutters, because they're a bear to do so. My hubs just used a step ladder and his mad painting skills to get them done.

To dress up the porch a bit, I brought my DIY floor mat from the kitchen out. I was never really a huge fan of it in the kitchen, and with the addition of my new rug, I liked it even less. It matches perfectly out front, so there it sits! Much better.

This chair was one of my grandma's (I have two of them) and a while ago I spraypainted them in Krylon Pimento Red. I thought it would be fun to paint our house number on the back of the chair, but before I commited I wrote it on with chalk. One of these days I'll get around to painting it for real…or maybe not.

I'm really digging the non-traditional mix of these colors.

I'm planning a few more little touches to the front door and then I can't wait to get my Fall on in the next few weeks!

And just for posterity's sake, let's take one last look at the before and after:

Can I get woot-woot?!: )
Are you guys into working outside? What can you recommend for the giant weed-fest going on in my front bed? P.S. Do you follow us on Facebook? If not, you totally should because we're always posting in-process pics and teasers about the projects we have going on. Plus, you'll get an inside look at our craziness!: )

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Thank you all for your awesome response to our SuperFab Room Redesign! We were thrilled with how it all turned out, (and thankfully, so were the homeowners!), but we realize that the houndstooth stencil from Royal Design Studio totally steals the show! Our favorite thing about this wall is the modern color scheme paired with the very classic houndstooth pattern. However, it's one thing to tackle an entire accent wall with a stencil, but it's another whole thing to do it with multiple colors! There's quite a saga behind this wall, and we learned some really helpful things about how to stencil well that we thought we'd pass along to you. When you DIY, it's all about learning as you go, right?

But first, let's talk about these gorgeous colors. When Monica and I met up at Home Depot, these paint colors literally jumped out at us and we picked them within five minutes of getting there. Gotta love when that happens. Of course, no one does it better than Martha Stewart, and these colors are all from her paint line. So without further ado, here are the beauties by name:

Now, back to the saga. We planned this stenciling project like any other; chose the order of the colors, picked our starting point, leveled the stencil and got to work. The only problem is that we did NOT have the right supplies. We started with only two brushes (for 4 paint colors!) and four jars of paint samples, which, unbeknownst to us, contain no binding agents so they don't work for stenciling. Each individual"tooth" took three coats of paint! And after four hours (no joke!) this is how much we had finished:

(Sorry, bad phone photo!)
Ugh! So frustrating! We took a break to kick ourselves for starting this project, and then reevaluated our situation. We estimated at least another 8 hours of work, which scared us silly. We are all about DIYing as much as possible, but we can also recognize when we are in over our heads, so we called in the big guns to help us out.

We had the good fortune of meeting Bernadette of The Faux Pro, Inc. through this blog, and boy, were we happy we did! Bernie specializes in stenciling (she's friends with Melanie from RDS), faux finishes of every kind and is truly a talent! Her work has been featured on HGTV and has an amazing portfolio of work on her site. She was generous enough to come help us out, and brought her assistant, Mary along, too. They let me tag along and watch what they do, and gave us loads of tips for making the process go smoother. And today we get to share those with you. Woohoo!
1. Gather the Right Supplies:

1- Five in One Tool: Comes in handy for all sorts of jobs like opening paint cans, cleaning rollers etc. 2- Frog Tape: Bernie swears by Frog Tape because it doesn't pull the paint off the walls. 3- Paint brushes, angled brushes, stenciling brushes: 4- Razor: 5- Detail brushes: Mary's entire job was to follow Bernie and touch up any bleeding. The result is an unbelieveably crisp finish! 6- Scissors: Bernie uses these to cut the stencil as needed along the ceiling and corners, instead of trying to bend the stencil. 7- Foam Rollers: Most of the time, Bernie uses a roller to stencil, especially because Mary can touch up any bleeds. 8- Spray Adhesive (not pictured): this is a must! We learned this the hard way.

9- Simple Green: This cleaner is the best for keeping your stencil like new so that you can use it over and over again, but she uses it for absolutely everything!

10- The Quality Masker: I have never seen anything like this, but it works magic! You attach the tape, along with brown paper to the masker and run it along the baseboard or ceiling. As you roll it out, the tape adheres to the brown paper creating a barrier. It takes literally half the time as taping out the edges by hand. You can find them at any paint store.

2. Set-up a Stenciling Station Before ever starting, Bernie finds a place to set up her work station. She lays out a drop cloth, covers it with a trash bag, then a towel and then the stencil. In between every set, she wipes the stencil clean and dries it with the towel. This ensures that you don't get paint on the carpet, but also that no paint remains on the stencil and gets on the wall. She keeps a hair dryer close by, if she wants to hurry the process along.

3. Use the Right Method If you're using a stenciling brush, make sure to blot it on something very absorbant, like paper towels or cardboard. Here's the most important tip I learned that day: Brush from the outside of the stencil in towards the center. Basically, brushing away from the edge lessens the likelihood of bleeding, which saves you tons of time!

Hopefully, this helps you out a bit, like it did for us. A big thank you to Bernie and Mary for pitching in with our project. If you have a project in mind, we totally recommend that you contact them! The end result of this saga is an amazing focal wall that makes us so proud! Have you ever gotten in too deep with a project? Do share!

Happy Monday, everyone! We hope you had a great day yesterday celebrating all the special mothers in your life. We both had enjoyable days with our families, but ended the day finishing up our fabulous room makeover, ie: SuperFab Room Redesign! We can't wait to reveal the room to you and give you a breakdown of all the fun projects we've been doing. The Room Reveal will be on Wednesday and you won't want to miss it!

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The #1 most frequently asked question recently is what color my kitchen is. Well, here you go:

I love it. It's the most perfect grayish/tan neutral you'll ever see. And, just so you know, I had Lowe's color-match this Olympic paint in Valspar Premium. Oh! And we're pretty excited (and think you will be too!) to start a FAQ page where you can find all the answers to your questions from our favorite products to use and the projects we do in our house to why we always DIY in frumpy clothes. Should be lots of fun, so stay tuned. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In case you missed it, we offered two pretty awesome freebies in the last two weeks: CanvasPeople (FREE 8x10!) and Paper Coterie ($15 credit towards anything you want! Use GIFTFAVES at checkout). Make sure you take advantage of those before it's too late.: )

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Ok, your turn: What was your most favorite Mother's Day moment yesterday?