Never Underestimate the Power of Paint

Here are the highlights of today's topic:

• Paint is inexpensive
• Paint is very easy and (depending on size of room) fairly fast
• Paint can create an entirely different mood in a room
• Faux finishes can transport you to a far away land without leaving your house

Today's topic is paint. As you will hear on almost any decorating show, changing the wall color in a room is one of the least expensive ways to instantly change the mood. This is, of course, assuming that you don't choose the most expensive paint available. Well, even if you do, but you paint the room yourself, you will probably still save money over paying someone to paint it for you. My husband and I painted almost every room in our former house, and we have plans to paint almost every room in our new house. The only issue we have right now is time, since our rooms are pretty big, it will probably be a several day ordeal to paint our living room. Just painting a room with a flat paint can add a lot of drama or just change the mood of the room, but if you want to invoke a sense of taking a trip to another country, consider a faux finish. Most faux finish techniques are fairly easy and just involve one or two special tools to help the process. When I was a junior in high school my parents let me paint my room, I decided to use a sponge to dab on sky blue paint over my white walls, the result, a room amongt the clouds. It broke my heart when they later painted it white in order to sell their house faster (I had moved out to go to college so I got over that heartbreak pretty quickly). Our new house is a wild rainbow of colors on the second floor. The former owners had three kids who requested strange colors for their rooms. One room is a sunny yellow with LIME greed trim, mouldings and light switch and outlet covers. The next room is bubble gum pink with a BRIGHT blue ceiling and matching blue trim, mouldings, light switch and outlet covers. In this room, there are white clouds painted on the ceiling with glow in the dark plastic duckies and smiley faces stuck up there. And the third room is the opposite of the first room, LIME green walls with yellow trim, mouldings, light switch covers and outlets. But as I mentioned in the previous post, the lime green color is growing on me. And, I can probably live with the yellow room because we have designated that room for the "future" nursery (no definate need for it as of yet, but we like to plan ahead). As for the bubble gum room, that is my exercise room at the moment and I am hoping to paint it a soft, calming blue and change out the ceiling color.
My husband helped me pick out paint samples for a new faux finish called bellagio faux that Behr paints is promoting. The results are beautiful but the process seems quite labor intesive. Chris (my dear husband) wants to paint our living room with the vaulted ceilings using this faux technique, I told him we should try it on a smaller room first to see how much work it involves before investing in the supplies to do the entire living room. If you are afraid to change the look of your white walls, just think of it this way, you can always paint it back to the white you had before if you don't like how it came out. Also, consider purchasing small amounts of the color you like and try it out on a small portion of your wall or even on a design board that you can hang on the wall for a few days to see if you really like the color after all. One last note, pay attention to the sheen (flat, eggshell, semi-gloss or gloss) of the paint you are buying. The former owners of my house painted the walls in the living room a blah brown color and painted the baseboard trim in the same brown but used an enamel of some sort. Then, I guess they decided to go back and do touch ups or something but used the WRONG paint, they used the enamel or glossy to touch up over the flat. It resulted in a very splotchy paint job, which we are just DYING to paint over. The only issue we have, as I said before, is finding the time to paint the entire space. For now, we are just adding art to cover the splotches until we decide on the paint color and find the time. Well, I hope this has helped and that I didn't digress too much from the topic. Feel free to share your tips or experiences with paint.

Until next time, Happy Decorating,

Anna L.

Decorating Tip:Give New Life to Old Stuff

A popular design idea that is floating around lately is an obvious one: use what you already have, but in a new way, to decorate your home. Here's a personal example, when my husband and I were searching for a new home to purchase, we found one that most people had passed up because it needed a lot of cosmetic work. The carpet is a horrible green shaggy thing (runs the entire two floors) and the walls are crazy colors. Our first plan was to repaint EVERY wall in the house. Well, we haven't painted a SINGLE wall in the house yet (we've been here about three months). I had picked out a nice pale blue color for my sewing room which started as a lime sherbet green. But, as I settled in to my new sewing studio, and as I started adding my accessories to the space, I decided that bright green wasn't so bad. As it turns out, lime green and pale blue with brown accents all work together pretty well, and I even had some fabric that included those colors which I was able to incorporate into a sewing machine cover. So, before you rush off to the paint store, live in your space for a little while and see if the colors don't grow on you after awhile. Now, as for the other room which is bubblegum pink with blue trim, and a blue ceiling with white clouds, that will probably get a makeover. :)
Also, don't forget that furniture can take on an entirely new look if it is just moved around a little. There is a show called Decorating Cents on the Home and Garden Television channel http://www.hgtv.com which does amazing things by just rearranging furniture. They call it "no cost decorating". The concept is fairly simple, go around your house and search for items that can be grouped, find an end table from your formal living room, a lamp from the bedroom, and maybe a rug from the closet, and put them all together in your family room and you have a fabulous room that looks put together. Unfortunately, they never really show what the other rooms look like without the end table, the lamp or the rug. And they never reveal that perhaps the home owner had to go out to buy new items for those rooms, but the idea is a good one. Many times people like to collect similar items but don't even realize they have a collection until someone with a fresh perspective finds it all. Has that ever happened to you?
Finally, think about family or even friends who may be doing some Spring cleaning and may be willing to give you their gently used furniture or accessories. It may be easier to ask family, I know I wouldn't hesitate to ask my parents for an old chair that they have in their storage room if I thought that I could put it to use, and most of the time they would be happy to see it go where it would be best appreciated. My sister is especially good at dumpster diving (and she always seems to live close to people who throw away cool stuff). She loves to find furniture that people put on the curb for the trash collection and use it in her home. Now, that may sound sort of gross but I promise you, it's perfectly sanitary, she only salvages old TV armoirs and wooden stools.
Well, that seems to be enough for now. If you read this and have any examples to share of how you reused what you have for decorating, please post.

Until Later Happy Decorating,

Anna L.

Vision for the Future

Welcome to my newest blog Priceless Decorating, by the Princess of Design. Well, truth be told, I am no princess and all I know about design (meaning interior design/decorating) is what I have learned from TV and magazines, but hopefully we will all learn something along the way. I hope I can help with your decorating dilemmas by offering inexpensive alternatives to brighten and embellish your personal space. I am an amateur decorator, but I think I have a good eye (or at least that is what I am told). I will take the time to research your questions and offer the best advice I can find. Granted, most of what I post will be my ideas and what I have done in my own home, but if I can't answer your question from my own experience, I will research it to find some answers. Each week (hopefully, ideally more often) I will post a tip that relates to decorating on a budget. It may be a new way to use paint or fabric in a space or a great idea I just saw on TV. There may be several posts at the beginning because I have a lot to say about this topic, so read on and feel free to comment or ask questions. I hope you can enjoy reading my blog as much as I will enjoy writing it!

Until next time,
Happy Decorating.

Princess of Design, Anna L.