Men would be cursing me right now.......

HIYA!

Well by now there is no need to repeat myself so I won't....... I really dislike golden oak!!!
Sorry...... that slipped out.

Anyways, I wanted to post about one of the very first projects I did in our house. Before we even moved in. My fabulous Mother and I decided to paint over the oak wall o'scariness in my great room just off the kitchen. I just knew that I couldn't stand in the kitchen and look at a whole wall of the stuff so we got to work painting away. Here is a couple pics of the wall when we got the place.

Pretty nice hey? That wedgewood blue just does it for me.....Ya no. So we got to work. First we sanded with a 220 grit sanding block to rough up the surface. Next we primed with Benjamin Moore oil based primer for the best adhesion. ( You will also notice that the walls are now a colour called Snowball. I picked it out from the off-white collection at Benjamin Moore. It was later changed to the name "Grey Owl")

As you can see the primer made it look about a bazillion times better and we were only half way. You will also see the tile was the wedge wood blue colour as well. The previous owners had painted it and so I did the same. I'm sorry but I just couldn't get into that blue or live with it in my house. So we ended up priming that too. One of my favourite colours is a very creamy one called "White Down" I chose that for the entire wall. On the tile and hearth I went with a colour called "Almost Black" which was very much a charcoal grey if you ask me.  Here is the finished product!

YAY!

There you have it! I just love it. I am so happy that I took the plunge and painted over the oak. I know most men cringe at the thought of it but I think that it made such a dramatic difference. SO my biggest on-going problem is how to stylize my shelves. I am constantly changing them up and have yet to find the perfect look. I love the look of books as you can see and it's very handy to have them at your fingertips. I just wonder if it just looks like I threw some things on some shelves? Does it look cluttered? Tell me people. What have you found that works great for styling your shelves? What looks best to you?

Well talk to you all again soon!


xoxo
-L