♪ A Few of My Favorite Things ♪♫

Okay, so two of my favorite things:  PAINT and LUMBER! 

Having sold that antique vanity earlier this week, I found myself in possession of a small amount of cash.  I decided not to get fabric for the couch - I could only have gotten about half of it, and I'd rather buy it all at once so that I don't have to worry about going back and it not being there any longer.  That would suck.

Instead, I got materials for two projects:  new paint for the common areas of the house (half price, baby!) and lumber for the kitchen pot rack project I keep talking about but not really talking about.

New Living Room, Party of 1 

Here's a shot of the current wall and ceiling colors in the living room :

 

The ceiling looks really dark in this pic; but the wall color is pretty much spot-on.  I call it "Matagorda" - I mixed it myself to match some sand I collected the last time I was on the beach in Matagorda, TX (which was waaaay too long ago!)  I like it, but an entire houseful is getting to be a bit...beige. 

Here's the paint I brought home earlier this week - and the actual color of the ceiling. 

"Wood Smoke", by Glidden.  The paint I brought home was another brand, I forget which (American somethingorother? *shrug*). 

The color is darker, and grayer - not by much, but just enough that it'll change the entire character of the room.  I really can't wait to get started.


The entire common area of the house is painted all the same color, ceilings and walls: the entry hall, dining room, kitchen, and living room.  Since all four areas are open to each other, I went with one big color scheme when I painted the Matagorda, and I've really loved how harmonious and smooth the effect is.

The "crown molding" that you see in the first picture?  Is totally just white paint on the ceiling and the top of the walls.  And it's not fooling anybody - it's not meant to.  It serves the same purposes:  it's a visual divider between blocks of color, it calls attention to walls shapes and angles, and it creates the illusion of a higher ceiling.  Someday it'll turn into real crown molding, when it grows up; but today is not that day.  For the time being, it pleases me.  I'm actually thinking about expanding it - only by 3" on the ceiling, but extending it down the wall a good 8" or so, as though it were a dropped ceiling, and doing a stencil or trompe l'oeil border across the bottom to make it look even more like molding.  I honestly haven't decided yet. 

Which is one reason I'm not starting with the painting tonight, like I want to.  The other reason is that I'm going to just blow my kitchen UP if I don't do something about the storage in there...



My Queendom For Some *$%#2@ Storage

So, tonight I'm building this:

In the teeny-tiny inset in the top, you can see a hint of the situation now:  there's a trash can wedged between the fridge and the wall of The World's Most Annoying Pantry.  The trash is crammed in there in an attempt to keep my puppy out of it (which doesn't work);  the pantry would be great if it weren't crammed with WAY too much junk. 

Enter the pot rack - which actually is basically one of those over-the-toilet shelving units that you see in bathrooms.  Trash can underneath (with a lid that I'm hoping will prove to be puppy-proof), pots and pans and bakeware - and maybe the coffee/tea stuff, too - on the upper shelves.  And two empty shelves inside the pantry, yay! I don't know whether I'm more excited about building stuff, or about re-organizing the pantry afterward. 

The only problem is that I haven't decided yet whether to:

• stain the rack to match the kitchen cabinets, or
• paint it gray "Wood Smoke" to match the new walls, or
• paint it white to match the trim and the fridge.

Staining the rack to match the cabinets would balance them out across the room.  But it would also be a big, heavy block of darkness on that side of the room - I moved the fridge the other day when I got the new trash can, and I'm loving how huge just that small change makes the kitchen look.  It has me wondering about cluttering up that space again with a big obvious piece of furniture.  So maybe the white. 

What do you think?

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