I Needed a Blue Room

About three weeks ago now, we started a home improvement project.  We set out to paint the house.  Our house was plagued with some of the gaudiest, most unattractive wall paper I had ever seen and it was covering every flat surface imaginable!  I had stripped some of it but only to uncover more layers of horrific florals and stripes that had adhered themselves with no intention of ever coming down!  The painter wound up stamping our entire house with a plaster texture and just covering up the never ending amount of wallpaper.

I chose some colors for the house that are very un-like me but that I knew would work with our fabrics and all of the wood trim (there’s as much wood in this house as there was wallpaper). As I type this, I’m propped up in my bed surrounded by a light slate blue that matches my comfy quilt.I’m not a blue person but am hoping that some blue in my bedroom calms the sneses and helps us rest.  Our adjoining bathroom is a deep and dark slate gray.

Once the whole hosue was freshly painted, the old laminate floors looked awful.  I wanted to put down ceramic tile but I did not want the expense or labor that it would cost me in money and time so I bought a floating laminate floor that looks and feels like ceramic once its down.  I bought a brown and blue slate pattern and guess what? It looks fantastic.  It looks more than fantastic.  The laminate is only in the bathrooms of our house,  but coupled with the fresh paint and a good eye, I just fooled most who will come over into thinking it must have cost a fortune! NOT! Let’s see… 2 gallons of paint + 60 squares of flooring at .42 a square… .42X60= $25.20 in flooring and $60 in paint. I bought Behr’s paint and primer and skipped a step…

After all of my years working as an Interior Designer, my favorite projects were those that I had a small budget but still could make big changes.  Changing your home or office doesn’t have to cost big bucks, yo ucan really making sweeping and profound changes on a short shoestring budget with a little ingenuity and the willingness to do things yourself.  In our case, we’re pretty handy and that really helps.  You can have a million dollar look for the fraction of that by careful shopping and tackling the projects and labor yourself!

We’re big customers of Home Depot just because that is the only big box store of its kind out here in the country.  People are speechless when they walk into the log cabin and learn that our lighting, fixtures, flooring, pulls, hardware and so much more, came from our local Home Depot.  Most of the signature looks from popular designers have a similar knock off available at Home Depot or Lowe’s and you just have to have a keen eye for such things. For example, my chandelier. The one I wanted at Restoration Hardward was upwards of $700. Something similar at Pottery Barn was $349. I bought the same design with a slight difference at Home Depot for $219. Ha! it satisfies the look that I wanted to achieve at a fraction of the cost.

People have asked me since the beginning of time: What is the one thing I should do to change my room? My answer is always the same: PAINT.  Painting your room a new color is the cheapest way to make a bold and dramatic change to your space.  For the cost of a couple of gallons of paint, you can change the whole look of your room.  And with that, let me add that you need to be bold when it comes to choosing your paint colors- don’t be afraid of color!  The days of all white or beige are over. Flip open any magazine and see how others are using color- go wild and pick something even a shade darker than what you would consider ‘safe’.  You’ll be suprised! It will be great.  And one more thing that is good about changing your room with paint: you can paint over it if you don’t like it. You’re not committed to keeping it like you would be with new furniture, wallpaper, whatever… paint can be ‘erased’ in no time and for very little investment!

Finally our project is over and we’re back to living around here.  Once the walls were painted and the flooring done, we cleaned this house like a healthy spring cleaning on steroids! Finally we are breathing a sigh of satisfaction and marveling at our improved surroundings as we prepare for a slew of fall visitors and a jam-packed calendar.  The slate blue serentiy here in the bedroom will be a welcomed sanctuary in the weeks to come, I’m sure!