Blue and Green Shadows: Bedroom Makeover

Long post warning.


When last we saw my bedroom, it looked like this:

I had a white-on-white bedroom for about six years, the centerpiece of which was my beloved Ikea Alvine Kvist duvet cover and shams.  I loved the white look, but I was getting a little bored and wanted some color, so when I moved into my current home I painted my bedroom a sort of dusty medium blue (Sherwin Williams' Silvermist) without a second thought.  However, a few months in I realized that my blue walls and white floral comforter were looking a bit little-girl-bedroom-ish.

Then about a month ago I was looking through Ikea's online catalog, and I found this spread:

I needed it. I fell instantly in love with the tonal color scheme.  I needed those blue and green shadows playing off each other.  I needed the turquoises and teals and mints and aquas and deep, dark, hunter green.  I needed them in my life.

I instantly set about converting my bedroom to a room based on that picture.  Because I'm NUTS about blue and always have been, my house had no shortage of random knick knacks to harvest to use in my bedroom.  I removed everything that wasn't blue or green, and brought in a few blue and green things from around the house.  I changed most of the feel without spending a dime.

For the bedding - the biggest part of the makeover - I ordered this duvet cover and shams set from Amazon.com.  It's a perfect medium jade green (it matches Sherwin Williams' Privilege Green (what a weird name) and it plays with the blue sheets in a really neat way.

I also created a gallery wall above/around the bed, which was sort of accidental.  I love the nude woman on the green background (artist: Matt Manley) and planned to only frame a couple of small posters next to it to balance out its height;  but before I knew it I had created a whole wall of artwork in similar colors to those of the bedroom, and I LOVE the way it turned out.

I exchanged the white Ikea curtains for a set of muted teal sheers that I ordered online.  I hung 4 panels on the window instead of two, for depth and a little more light control.  There's still plenty of light for the plants, but the room isn't flooded in glare all the time - it's nice and moody, and dark at night.

I moved the wooden jali screen from behind my bed's headboard over to the corner, and hung solar string lights from the top of it (the little solar panel hides behind the curtains in the window). I have to say, I didn't think I'd like the lights, but I LOVE them so much.  In front of the screen and below the hanging philodendron is a small Ficus tree in a blue-gray scalloped ceramic planter.

On the other side of the window, next to my dresser, sits a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart.   The top of it is filled with small plants and cuttings, and glass jars.  Lower shelves house random things that I use regularly but which don't really match the room or have a permanent home - my makeup, jars of lotion, some books, and other little things like that.

This giant silver metal tray came from Ikea a million years ag (I forget the name) - and, actually, so did the dresser it's sitting on (I spray painted the handles gold).  Also dresser-top are a green jade lotus incense burner, a small gold picture frame, a Ming Aralia in a teal planter, a couple of blue glass bottles, and, centrally, a blue-green glass vase I scored at Goodwill for $3, with a fake white peony in.

The vanity in my room is all white, and there's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.  But I have stashed lots of blue and green glass items on it - most of them are actually useful and contain little toiletry items like swabs, cotton balls, perfumes, and so on.

On the north wall of the room is my black jewelry cabinet and dressing table,  a small window with a dusky teal sheer curtain on it.  There's also a  Tullsta tub chair from Ikea, with their "Nordvalla" light green cover. 

So that's the room so far.  I love the way it looks, particularly at night when the string lights and the bedside lamp are the only light in the room and everything is all dusky and shadowy.  I don't know that I'm done with it - there could always be more blue and green glass in my life, hehe.  I think the room needs more little pops of gold and/or copper.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to play with until I get it right.

For fun, and to check my work, I matched up nearly everything in my room with my Sherwin Williams paint deck.  The deck is a few years old, so some of the colors are have been replaced/renamed, but they still come up on a google search if you want to see them. Here are the colors I've used in this room:


Blues:
Silvermist (walls)
Rain (sheets)
Quietude (glassware/ceramics)
Tempe Star (Raskog cart and some of the glassware)
Moody Blue (glassware)
Really Teal (curtains)

Greens:
Softened Green (lotus incense holder)
Hunt Club (chair pillow, pillowcases on the bed)
Courtyard (Manley painting background, most of the plants)
Rosemary (glassware)
Comfort Gray  (glassware/ceramics)
Spearmint (Ikea Tullsta chair cover)
Privilege Green (duvet cover and shams)

They All Rolled Over and One Fell Out

Seven years is a pretty good run for a bed.  Especially a wooden bed that you built yourself, when you'd never built more than a simple shelf before.  Sadly, my long-beloved bed finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, and I've been sleeping at an angle ever since, due to the way in which it sort of half-collapsed.
Oops.

I'd been looking for the perfect metal bed as a replacement, and I really wanted the SVELVIK from Ikea.  However, (as with 90% of the things I lust after at Ikea), I waited too long and the SVELVIK had been discontinued by the time I showed up ready to buy one.
Oops.

Target, and the internet to the rescue!   It isn't exactly the SVELVIK, but it'll do nicely - and does.  This went together easily and relatively quickly.  It's nice and solid, and I like the finish on it.  Best of all, it's inexpensive - and it was even 30% off last week when I ordered it.

I've been playing with the bay box window in the bedroom, too:  more plants, fewer laundry baskets on the windowsill.

Bonus:
Ikea's RASKOG cart being a bicycle  workshop cart (with GLIS organizer box in the top).  It's not terribly organized yet;  I just have small things on top, medium-large things in the middle, and BIG things in the bottom (mostly the tarp I put down when I clean the bikes indoors).

Sorry about the weird photo filter. My phone did that and I couldn't be arsed to take a new pic at 6:30am.  :D

Bedroom: Accomplished

My weekend was extremely busy.  I was off work on Friday; I basically woke up, had some coffee, and got to work - and didn't stop until Sunday night.  I painted walls and fixtures, moved furniture, repaired furniture, worked in the yard, cut pieces of wood into smaller pieces, worked on my bicycle, rearranged rooms, hung curtains, knocked out a bunch of boring, regular ol' housework - so many things!  I'm actually sore all over, I worked so hard. 

My biggest (and favorite) accomplishment from the weekend was this:

At last, a bedroom that looks like my actual bedroom!  Literally, actually - like 90% of the things in here came from my room at the old house;  even the paint color is similar (this is Glidden "White Bucks," a very, very pale gray;  the old room was Behr's "White Clay", which was a warm white with yellowy-green undertones). 

All of my old bedroom furniture is here.  I didn't exactly want to throw it all into the same corner, but, that's the way the room works.  Believe me, I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice options for that huge, glorious box window. 

It ends up functioning like a little "work triangle", like you hear about in kitchen design - it definitely makes getting ready for work in the morning fairly hassle-free.

Interior With Woman Reading,
Carl Holsoe, 1863-1935

In case you're wondering - and I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it before - my inspiration in this room (and its predecessor) comes largely from Carl Villhelm Holsøe's paintings of his home.  I like Victorian interior paintings in general; but there's a contented tranquility in Holsøe's work that I really love. 

 I cannot get enough of this amazing, 16"-deep box window. 

 Rabi likes it, too. 

In case you missed it in the pictures above, this is my Aardvarkadile.  It's a crocodile with enormous, floppy, lopsided ears, because...well, why the hell not, right?
Hee.

Just in case you forgot, here's what the room looked like before I moved in - not a terrible blue on the walls; teal and gold inside the window box and all over a decorative shelf that spanned one wall of the room; linoleum tile on the floors. 

There's also a hand-painted ceiling fan;  it's still there, but I flipped the blades so that the plain, pale-wood-look side shows. 

The pink duct tape on the window was actually holding one of the panes in place - about a week ago I removed the tape, the pane, and all the old caulking, and re-set the pane into the frame. 

Things left to do in this room:  

• baseboards will be installed soon by the tilers, who removed the old ones when they installed the new (gray, ceramic, wood-look) tile throughout the house
• there's no door on the closet.  If I catch that curtain on my face and pull it down onto my own head one. more. time...
• what was left of my bedframe finally collapsed!  Time for a new bed. 
• The windows desperately need blinds, or some other privacy-protecting covering, underneath the sheer, white curtains.  That window film, though lovely - even though it's mismatched - is practically transparent at night when the lights are on indoors. No bueno. 

Soft Lighting, Small Lighting, Little Balls of Flame

Threw a couple of things together for my art studio last week that I'd been thinking about:

• A sheer, cotton, red, paisley curtain panel I've had in my fabric stash forever
• A wee (3") wooden shelf, cut from scrap, fixed in place about 2/3 up the window, with
• A bamboo rod and white muslin café curtain on clip-rings below it, and 
• A couple of glass bottles of Pothos and Philodenron rooting in them
• A trio of brightly-colored, glass, "Moroccan" candle lanterns hung where the sunlight can catch them.  They were a Christmas gift from a friend. :) 

After agonizing over what color to paint the room, I've decided NOT to paint it.  I like the white.  I like the backdrop it gives for ANY color I want.  I've decided that this is going to be my random, riotous, Boho paradise-y art space.  It IS a room for creativity, after all.  

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Aziz, Light!

I don't know exactly when I went from "I love the dim, moody aspect of the light in here" to "OMG THIS PLACE IS A TOMB".  The whole ceiling and curtains thing in the bedroom recently was, when you get right down to it, mostly about the bedroom being entirely too dark to live with anymore.

The dining room has been feeling the same way.  Fortunately, that's an easy, fast, and FREE fix:

Much better than the way it was before.  These café length curtains were made from the old full-length sheers in about fifteen minutes.  The tablecloth is just a piece of linen from my fabric stash - not even hemmed (I like the soft ragged edges).

The mini-blinds are still up, because I DO still need a bit more privacy at night;  but then, this is just Phase I. When I get to the next layer of things in this dining room, I'll be dealing with the blinds then.

before:  pretty, but really dark when the light's off  (blinds, long curtains)

More in store for this room: 

• "phase 2" of the whole window treatment thing
• slight wall color adjustment
• ceiling paint, just like I did in the bedroom, for the dining room and kitchen
• chair facelift
• chandelier awesomation 

Stay tuned.

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Bigger & Brighter Bedroom

Maybe Blogger will get its head out of its @$$ and allow me to make this entry on the third try.  Hmph.

BEDROOM YAY!   I spent my Sunday afternoon correcting some issues in the master bedroom.  It was dark, mismatched, the curtains were fugly (seriously, wth was I thinking??), and there was still an old, queen-sized comforter on my king-sized bed.  Also, I was tired of looking at the blue ceiling:  it looked alright with the blue walls, but it was a different tone, too dark for the room, and, er, I had never bothered to go back and touch up around the edges when I painted it.  Whoops.

σ_σ

Fortunately, last week a sale and a coupon happened to me at the exact moment I was thinking about the bedroom issues, and I ordered a new, white duvet cover and shams in the correct size.

Over the weekend I sorted through all the paint in my garage (I have a lot of paint, you guys), and mixed together all my various whites and off-whites, to produce a soft, creamy off-white to use on the ceiling.  I also picked up a white, king-sized flat sheet, and made it into a pair of curtains;  I teamed those up with a pair of those Ikea LILL sheers that I have a frillion of and hung them hiiiigh on the walls under the the new, wide, ceiling border.

Et voila: 

Muuuch better!  The room is brighter, and feels about twice as big as it was before.

I absolutely adore the big, wide border around the top of the room.

And the off-white looks fantabulous with the wall color.

It's hard to see the curtains against the morning light in the pictures;  the white sheet-curtains are on one half, and the sheers on the other half.

While I like the effect, I do plan to get another sheet and repeat the process so that I have two curtains on each window, with the sheers in the center instead, so that it's a bit more balanced.


I also moved that dumb little rattan chair over to the window.  It feels less crammed-into-the-room in this corner;  the dog crate that was here is now more out of the way, and won't be getting doggy dust and grime all over the new white curtains.








Other things to continue working on:

• That dumb little rattan chair.  It's falling apart, and, well, it's pretty ugly.  I really would rather have something comfy and stuffed, like this.  
• Note the obvious lack of an actual comforter in the new comforter cover.  Oops.  Also - the ivory sheets are getting pretty worn, and need to be replaced.  With white, or blue, or gray.  Not sure yet. 
• The nightstands, which are functional, but boring as hell (as opposed to the old ones which were cute, but not remotely functional).  
• The bed needs a skirt to cover those box springs; and I do eventually plan to adjust the old four-poster frame to fit this bed. 

Anyway - yay!  I love it.  :) 

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Things To Paint: Furniture, Dining Room

My dining room:

This was in 2010 - the walls are now gray to match the rest of the house.  Which I love, but I have more plans...

sketch 2011

I still want to build the window seat in the bay, and string sheer curtains across it.


I'd also like to paint the dining room chairs black to match the table.

sketch May 9, 2012

I've also decided I want to brighten up the room a bit:

1.  Paint the [blue] ceilings in the kitchen and dining room a soft off-white, with an 8" border around the top of the walls to make a sort of "tray ceiling" look.

2.   Paint the walls, also, leaving the gray around the borders/"chair rail".

3.   I'm also going to put white linen café curtains into the bay windows, behind the sheer that will drape over the whole area;  and paint the insides of the window casings a deep charcoal, or maybe even black.


While I don't have the lumber yet to build the window seat, I DO have all the paint, fabric, curtains, and the Ikea DIGNITET curtain wire system to hang the giant sheers...I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.  

This weekend?  

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Spring Cleaning?

I keep seeing these pop up on blogs this week, so I thought I'd do my own slightly-snarkier and personalized version.  Not to give YOU advice, just to mutter to myself "out loud" (as it were) and in public.

1.  Wash the dog.   I have three 50lb dogs.  YOU wash them if you want them clean.

Actually, Raven's on my to-do list for the back half of this month:  he's a hair farm, and I'm *done* trying to keep this dog clipped myself.  He's up for his shots, so as soon as he's got them all up-to-date, he's going to the store for a professional cut, I don't care how much I have to pay for it.  I'm sick of pulling burrs and dreadlocks out of this dog's fur.

2.  Clean the windows.  I DO actually "do windows", and usually I do it this time of year.  I didn't last year, though...or the year before.  Whoops.  They're a bit manky.  Someone gave me a really nifty car washing brush tool once that hooks up with the end of a garden hose - you can put soap or liquid wax into it if you want to, and the handle extends to like six feet.  Really nifty tool.  Do I wash my car, like, ever?  Nope.  But it's awesome on windows!

3.  Cobweb patrol!  Yeah, I admit it:  my house is crawling with cobs.

*ba-dump-CSH!* 

And I DO run the long-handled duster around the ceiling and doorways more than once a year, but MAN that crap builds up, with all the hairy animals that bring dust and other junk in from the backyard all day long.

4.  Deal with built-up piles of clutter.  Also something I actually do more than once a year - otherwise I'd live in a dumpster.  But I did just recently tidy up and re-organize the laundry room that I spent all that time and effort to sort-of re-model two years ago. (Yeesh, has it been that long?)

I'm also in the middle of cleaning up and re-organizing the garage, and dealing with half-finished projects out there.  The next step (a new wall o' shelves) is going to be a doozy, though. Stay tuned.

not my actual house,
thank goodness

5.  Wipe up built-up fingerprints on wall switches, hallway corners, and around doorknobs.

Yeah, it's probably time to do that, actually.  Just because most of my walls are painted gray doesn't mean that manky crap doesn't show.  Bleh.








Also on my Spring Cleaning list:

• take down all the draperies in the house and run them all through the washer.  I do this about twice a year, actually, for my allergies.  I don't use curtains I can't put into the washing machine for exactly this reason. 
• fireplace cleanup - already done, actually. 
• Bleach and re-seal the grout in the tiled areas of the house.  I used to do this every Spring, but I haven't in about three years.  It needs it, though.  

And some maintenance items that need to be dealt with soon, or else: 

• the deadbolt on the nifty new storm door I installed a few weeks ago is suddenly not working, for some reason.  I needed to take the cylinder out and take it to the hardware store to have it re-keyed anyway;  I'll have them look at it while I'm there.  
• Another door issue: the "temporary" gate I put up over a hallway door to keep the dogs out of "Catland" (where the food, water, and litterboxes live) has now been in place for nearly FOUR YEARS.  And it's falling apart, of course, because it was never meant to last this long or put up with the abuse it's gotten over the years.  It's time to get off my ass and put the real solution that I've always meant to get around to, into place.  
• Two years ago, I scrubbed, patched, and re-painted all of the baseboard trim in the entire house...except for the dining room.  Sigh.  
• Oh, and the guest bathroom, too, and the paint on the trim in there is yellowed and chipped.  It needs to be re-done, especially since I re-painted the room not long ago, which just made the old trim look even worse than it did. 

And the garden...oh, don't even get me started. 

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OMG LOOK A POST

I haven't died.  That's a relief to some of you, not so much to others.

GUESS WHAT.

ooh, ahh.

The last time I decided to tweak the master bedroom (remember that?) I sort of got halfway through - took a bunch of stuff down/apart...and then never got around to putting it all back together.  Sigh.


<-- this is what the window situation has been in the room for, oh, I dunno, the better part of a year now?


And yes, the blinds really ARE that dirty.  They're eight years old!  Why do you think I started spray-painting the ones in the living room last year?

The other day I found a huge pile of nifty sort of taupe-y crinkle-charmeuse panels at the thrift store for like $2 each.  Whee!



That's a little better.  Bear with me, it's a work in progress.  (There's a second layer that's going up behind these curtains, now that I know I like them; and at some point I plan to change the blinds).


I still miss having all the red in the room before (the sari that used to hang over the bed was the wrong shade, which is what prompted the removal of dang near everything in the room except the big stuff and the stuff on the walls last year).

That's better - little touch of magenta (one of the sheer Ikea panels that used to be on the windows).


Next stop:  EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT THE ROOM.  Okay, not really.  But the nightstand situation, while convenient, is dumb and boring.  And I miss the curtains around the bed - I keep meaning to put up posts and rails like the old bed had, but I keep not getting around to it (story of my life this year).

And while I love the little lamp I made, (a) I want it in the living room, and (b) I have a really, really cool idea for a pendant for the bedroom...


tbc...

Oh, by the way...

I finished spray-painting the living room blinds last week, though I completely forgot to post about it:

Yep.  Those used to be white faded-ass yellowy-dirt color.

I seriously heart this. 

Now I just have to do the ones over the computer desk, as soon as I can get down to the store for more paint (I had some left over, but not enough to even begin another large blind.  More on that tomorrow).

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Happy Friday! Sort of!

It's Friday for me, anyway - I'm outta here for the weekend in just a few short hours.  Whee!

I finished the back door last night...mmm, no, I didn't.  I mean, I kinda did:  I clear-coated the brown parts of the door that I showed you yesterday, so that part IS finished.  I also started painting the bright white mullions on the door, in a deep teal to coordinate with the room.

I'd forgotten how LONG that takes! I'd painted them before, when I swapped out the paned window from another door that I scrounged from a curb in front of a house that was being remodeled;  the new door didn't fit my door frame, but the window was exactly the same size, so I swapped out the windows.  The "new" window trim had never been painted, though, and it was horribly yellowed with age and exposure (plastic) - and cracked, too, so there was cleaning and patching AND painting that day.  At the time, though, I had both doors completely disassembled, so although it was kind of a pain in the butt to paint all those mullions, it wasn't half the pain in the butt that it is doing them with the glass still underneath...with a 1/2" art  brush, no less!*   I painted around 6 out of the 15 panes, and it took me about an hour.  Oy.

But at least I'm painting something!  I've really kind of needed to paint things the last couple of weeks.  I pine and waste away when I'm not painting things.  I've been reading Better After recently, and it's made me just lust for an awesome piece of thrift-store furniture to refinish or restore or repaint! 

Except I DO have an awesome thrift find - a huge framed mirror that I picked up a couple of months ago for $8 and still haven't gotten around to fixing it up (mostly because I can't seem to decide on exactly what to do with it.  I was going to put it into the guest bath, but I changed my mind, so now I don't know where to put it, either!)

Door, mirror...re-do the entire craft room design because I've spent so long being a third of the way through the green-white-black thing that I started in there *two years ago* that I'm SICK of looking at it already (ironing board? just recovered it last month, you say? what ironing board?)  And of course, I have fabulous new ideas.

Not that any of them are remotely crystallized in my head yet; but here's a hint, to carry you through the weekend...

Design*Sponge

Everyone have an awesome weekend!  :o)




* No, I didn't tape off the glass panes first. The last time I tried that with a window I ended up scraping goo off the glass with a razor blade, which resulting in cutting myself and ruining my nails..  I'm a great cutter-inner, and I much prefer to just take care to begin with, and wipe off the occasional "oops" with a damp rag as I go.  :B


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Sneak Preview...

Well, hello, 2011! 

I sure was excited about the three-day weekend I just had - so much to do!  Including a project I was really, really not sure about.  Figured it would either be the FAIL to end all FAILS...or really freaking spectacular. 

The good news is, it's the second one!  The bad news is that Saturday morning I threw my back out and had to bum around on the couch the rest of the weekend. Resting.  ARGH.  I'm doing alright now; but I'm kinda peeved that I didn't get to finish my project over the weekend.

After the bamboo blind incident last week, it occurred to me for the thousandth time to wonder why I couldn't just spray-paint the blinds I had?  Some of you just cringed.  I do, too, just thinking about it - all those moving parts, and the cords?? Plus, spray paint can be iffy, even in practiced hands. This time, I googled for project tips, and found quite a few people who'd pulled it off successfully and were kind enough to share.

The trick, it turns out, is to work in small sections, and to keep the blinds moving while you're working.  I sprayed about 10 slats at a time, then worked the rod and strings to keep them separated while they dried.  The whole project took about two hours, and two cans each of dark gray primer and dark brown satin-finish spray paint. 

pardon our mess...

I love, love, love the way this blind came out.  I can't WAIT to do the other two in the living room (both twice the size of the first one, yeesh) - but that'll have to wait until Saturday, since I won't have enough daylight to work by after work this week.

In the meantime...hm.

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Well, FOOT.

...as my mother used to say (in an effort, I'm sure, to avoid using another four-letter word beginning with F in front of the kids). 

As I mentioned, Santa brought me a gift card to World Market last weekend.  Yay!  And tonight I exchanged that nifty little slab of plastic for three dark bamboo shades for my living room windows.  Just think: soft grey walls, billowy white mosquito-net curtains, large, bright windows - and these, filtering the light behind the sheers.

Really, that's just gorgeous.

Warm and natural.  Touchable.  Deep and dark, to bring that quality up off the floors onto the walls - but not so dark as to feel looming.  Light-filtering, just enough to open up the house by day but keep it safe from prying eyes at night...


EEENGHT!!!   <--- buzzer sound


They are perfect, in nearly every respect, and I really do love them to itty tiny pieces.  But privacy?  Hell no.  I clomped around outside in the mud and the cold, and alas, could see just about every single detail of the inside of my house through them.  I knew they wouldn't be opaque, but I was hoping for better than nearly transparent!  I'm sure it's just because the slats in the shades are spaced fairly loosely - I'd bet money that a more tightly-woven shade would offer more privacy. 

My first thought was to just take them back and go back to my sad, sorry, beat-up, old, dingy, metal mini-blinds (yuck).   Any other alternative seemed like too much work.  I mean, I could:

• put up some sort of low-profile light-blocking shade behind the bamboo shades that I can lower at night
• install a double-rod over the windows so I can have my billowy white sheers, but also a light-blocking drape I can pull closed at night (I just can't deal with heavy curtains. They can look lovely, but every time I've tried them in my own space, they just seem too heavy, and I feel trapped).  
• affix some sort of light-blocking cloth or paper to the back of each shade, which is time-consuming, probably a messy process, and completely defeats the purpose of letting light IN during the DAY.  

I'm just not sure.  What do you think?   It's not like I don't have time to decide.  I put the shades in my truck so I could take them back today...which means they'll be in there for at least a week or two before I actually get around to it.  0:)


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Arch, Arch, Baby

Vanilla Ice??  I know, I'm sorry.  Lacking in the creative title department this afternoon, it seems.  (Probably need more coffee).

hallway between living room/bedroom

My house is full of these arches - well, in the common areas, anyway.  I've painted them different colors, I've painted faux molding around them,  I've painted bricks around them...

kitchen/living room pass-thru, 2006

I've painted the insides of them a different color than the walls.  I've hand-drawn little botanical border motifs inside them with a *Sharpie*   (which looked awesome, but took about forty-eight coats of primer to get it to stop soaking through once I decided to cover it up).   I've hung things in front of/behind them:

entry hall into living room

Matching pair in a white/green living room a few years ago...

late Winter 2007

For about five minutes in early 2007, the arches and  the dark "wood" floors inspired me to try go pseudo-Spanish in there.  It didn't last long.  Seriously, it was like a month before I scrapped the whole idea as a "nice place to visit, but wouldn't want to live there" - but that period was when I built my "salvaged wooden beam" fireplace mantel, which I really, really love. 

back when a hollow box was a truly daunting project

So, all of this to say that I'm thinking about doing something with my arches.  I don't know if I'll paint the insides of them again or not.  Nothing's really grabbing me about that lately, even though it's been on my mind a lot.

However, a year ago or so, I cut out a paper template traced from the doorways, sized it to one of the windows in the living room, and taped it up there behind the blinds, to see if I could mimic the look of an arched window to match the doors.  I wasn't expecting much, but I loved the way it looked, and had always planned to go back and try it on all the living room windows, and then take a more permanent stab at it if I liked it.

I may go ahead with another paper mock-up this week.  Especially since it's entirely possible that I'll be getting new blinds in there soon.  Santa brought me a gift card to my very favorite store! :o)


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