Why Decorate When No One Else Sees?

Today I’m going to share with you a little hallway that comes in from my garage. But first I have to whine. Just a little bit. Due to the fact that I have never had a mudroom, or even a decent back entrance, my six kids have spent their lives coming in through the front door and dropping everything right there - by the door, or in my living room, or on the stairs - depending on where we lived. I would nag at them to put it all away and because they weren’t afraid of me or my nagging, we would have piles of shoes, because of course they never wore the same shoes twice in a row, or put the ones from yesterday or last week away in their closets, and it was a constant irritation. (I have a friend who can just look at her kids and they hop right to it or stop whatever it is they are doing. I was not blessed with that motherly gift and if I tried to give my kids a “look” they would laugh at me.)

I tried in our last house having them come through the garage, and I set up little cubbies for them and it worked for a little while, but because we didn’t have a lot of storage space in the house, the garage became that place and so they had a hard time navigating their way through the obstacle course that was our garage and soon started using the front door anyway. I was going to solve this in our new build by having an awesome mudroom with its own front entrance with little cubbies for their backpacks and shelves for their shoes, but since I didn’t get to build after all, I now have a side entrance into my laundry room with room for some hooks and a bench. But I also have lots of storage in this house and a detached garage for my husbands projects, so we actually get to park in the attached garage, so those little cubbies are actually accessible just before they come in the house from the car.

So just inside the door from my garage I have this little hallway with a closet. It’s a perfect place to hang our keys and to put a bench where we can sit to put on our shoes. Between the side entrance and the garage, we never come in the front door and I never have shoes and backpacks in my living room. Happy day! I came across a blog post that I had saved a while ago where someone had done a super cute entrance and the idea was perfect for this hall.

Inspiration from mindfullygray.com

I fell in love with the color I painted my upstairs bathroom and decided to use it again for the lower half of the wall. Of course I painted all my wood trim white like the rest of the house. Then I stained a 1x6 to match my closet doors and hung it with some hooks for jackets and purses.

About 20 years ago we lived in a house in Germany with a big picture window that looked out onto a field with some fruit trees and hills in the background. It was gorgeous in every season, with the flowering trees in the spring, the fall foliage, and then the sparkling ice hanging from the tree branches in winter. I have pictures from that window from all four seasons and I’ve always wanted to do something with them so I framed them and hung them above the hooks. They aren’t professional photographs by any means, and they are from the days before digital when you took a picture and then six months later took your film in to be developed and crossed your fingers that some of the pictures turned out ok, but they are meaningful to us and they are hanging in a back hallway so they work here. In one of them my two oldest girls are standing in the field when they were little, which makes it even more nostalgic.

Here you can see my “four seasons” photographs. It’s a narrow space so it was hard to get a good view. I also found a rustic bench and I used dark bronze coat and key hooks.

Before

After

I decided to go a little more rustic here since this is a back entry into the garage. I took down the old generic light fixture and added a dark bronze lantern to match the finish on the hooks. It just felt like a great place for a lantern. My lower wall is Benjamin Moore’s Dartsmouth Green 691, and the rest of the walls are Ballet White OC-9. Ballet White is a light beige with a green undertone and a high LRV so it brightens things up and goes really well with all the green in this room. This may not be a highly visible room in my house, but it’s now a little bright spot that brings some joy as I come and go throughout my day.

My First Reveal

So far I’ve talked about paint and wood trim, and what I should do about all the wood in my 90’s house. I gave y’all a peek at my stairs and my fireplace. I thought today I’d let you see what it all adds up to.

First though, I thought I should clarify what I said last week about paint colors and wood trim. I was talking to a friend who read my blog post and I might have implied that only blues and greens look good with wood windows and doors. I realize now I should choose my words more carefully. Oops. Lesson learned.

There are many warm colors that could go with your wood trim, I just happen to be decorating with blues at the moment. If you happen to have wood trim you aren’t doomed to decorating your whole house with cool colors forever. That could be really bad if you hated blue. The trick with warm colors is to make sure there is enough contrast between the wall and the trim. In other words, if you have orangey wood, dark orange walls might not be your best choice, and since it’s subjective, maybe you wholeheartedly disagree with me, even though I’m right. Same principle applies if you have yellowy wood trim. And neither one of those would go with a beige with pink undertones, the wall would look dirty, and then you’d never be able to let your mother-in-law visit. Here’s another great post on picking colors to go with your wood trim by Maria Killam, my go to expert on paint colors.

Now, on to the fun stuff. If you remember, I painted the fireplace and parts of the staircase white. I also painted the baseboards and door frames. I had the all the beige walls painted before I moved in to help brighten things up and reflect more light. I also took down the dated ceiling fan in the living room and put up a new light fixture since the only light came from the shiny brass can lights by the fireplace, which I also updated with flat white ones.

Here’s what it looked like before. (These pictures have the previous owners furniture in them, and were taken by a professional photographer who brought in a bunch of lights, making it appear much brighter than it really was. The walls almost appear white instead of beige in these pictures.)

Living Room Before

Another before picture from a different viewpoint

Here is what it looks like today with a little bit of paint and a new light fixture (and my furniture, of course). I’m really liking the mix of white and wood. I just can’t decide whether to paint my window trim. I painted my door trim and I love it. You can see one the french doors with white trim in the background of the second picture.

Living Room After

Another View

I love this room. The colors are soft and serene and the room is bright and airy. We use this as our formal living room and music room so it is always clean for guests, or just a quiet place to relax and read a book - unless someone is practicing or my grandson has his little friends over, of course.

Now let’s talk about how this room tells a story. Nothing in this room is arbitrary. I started with the painting that I love, which I’ve had for a long time, and dictated my color palette. The chairs were a bargain when Pier 1 closed their brick and mortar stores. The colors went perfectly with my painting. The sofa was a splurge. Since this is my formal living room I felt justified in spending a little extra on one with some style that would last a long time and was a fantastic color. I collected the pillows one at a time as I came upon them until I had the perfect mix for the room. I decided to go pretty subtle for the rugs, going with a blue gray to go with my blue gray walls and sofa. This is my foundation.

The piano is here because five of my six kids and I play. The cabinet holds music. The things on the cabinet and tables all came from places we visited or are family heirlooms. There’s a family portrait on the wall, and the other wall is a painting of the building where we were married. On the fireplace is an anniversary clock that belonged to my parents. The vase came from a trip I took to Poland years ago when we lived overseas, my grandson is in the picture frame, and the mirror I bought for $5 at a yard sale when we were young and poor. It used to be an ugly brass color, so I brightened it up with some paint to go with the fresh new gold finishes. I picked up some lamps on clearance, and waited for the coffee table to go on sale and voila, my living room is complete. Like I said on my home page, each piece is carefully chosen and curated, telling a story, not something that came from a furniture showroom - and see what you can learn about me just by visiting my living room.

To Paint or not to Paint

It all began five years ago when we bought three acres on the edge of town. We were going to build our dream house and live there till we die. No more stupid layouts, no more tiny closets - or worse lack of closets, no more dark rooms, tiny dining rooms, ugly tile, steep staircases, basement laundry rooms, nasty carpet, 7 ft. ceilings, backpacks in my living room… and best of all, no more packing or moving. Ever. Again.

I spent 29 years collecting ideas - things I liked, things I didn’t, things that worked, and things that didn’t. I clipped pictures from magazines and as technology advanced, saved more ideas in folders on my computer. Eventually I discovered Pinterest - what a glorious invention - and I started pinning and pinning, also saving ideas on Houzz, and I read blogs. I designed it myself, inside and out, refining it over the years. I learned about construction, how to draft, and I drew up the plans. I put it in my TapGlance app and arranged the furniture and hung curtains so I could walk through it in 3D and admire it. I lived in it virtually for years, tweaking it here and there. I finally had the plans for the perfect house. We planted trees, we had a contractor, we had sewer, we were getting ready to put in a driveway.

But things don’t always work out exactly like we plan, do they? Instead of getting to build my dream house, we bought a house. I won’t bore everyone with the details. It’s a beautiful house, with a great layout, and I only had to sacrifice a few things - my mudroom separate from the laundry room, a main floor guest room, an office for my husband in the house, 9’ ceilings, and my walk-in pantry. Instead my mudroom is in the laundry room, my guest room is upstairs, we built Karry’s office in the heated detached garage, and I’ll just turn an extra half-bath in the laundry room into an extra pantry. In exchange I got the open layout, main floor laundry room, walk-in closets, master bathroom, and fenced in yard I’ve never had. And bonus - an awesome yard with mature trees and all the landscaping already done for me.

What’s the catch, you say? Wood. And shiny brass. Everywhere. This house was built in 1992 and is firmly stuck in the 90’s. Wood-stained trim, wood-stained doors and windows, oak fireplace mantels, oak banisters and balusters, oak floors, and oak kitchen cabinets, 90’s style. My dreams of light, open spaces with 9’ foot ceilings, white windows, white trim and doors, white french doors, white fireplace surrounds, a white staircase, and light wood floors, dashed. I’m now immersed in wood and 8’ popcorn ceilings.

Before we moved in the first thing I did was paint. I guess I should say I hired someone to paint. After painting our last house so we could sell it, I vowed never to pick up another paintbrush - or roller. I got rid of the beige walls and brightened up the interior - I’ll save paint colors for another post. I then planned out what to paint white and what to leave wood. Then I broke my vow never to pick up another paintbrush and painted the fireplace. I could feel my father-in-law turning over in his grave with every brush stroke. I could also feel the judgment coming from my husband and other family members when I announced that I was going to paint over a solid oak fireplace mantel. I called a friend who had done the same thing for some emotional support and went for it.

Said friend also mentioned that she wished she had used oil-based paint instead of latex because she was painting over wood stain and she had trouble with scuffing and peeling. I took her advice and started with Zinsser Cover Stain oil-based primer. This gave me a base coat for the paint to stick to without having to sand it first. Then I painted it with Behr Oil-base Semi-gloss Enamel in Benjamin Moore’s Decorator’s White. Home Depot carries it. I had to buy it in quart size because of restrictions in the state where I live. Behr is always my go-to paint just because it has great coverage and I don’t have to paint a second coat. It costs more per gallon, but I spend less in the end. I sometimes have to do a few touch ups, but never a full second coat, even when covering red paint with a light color. The oil-based paint takes about a week to cure, but it hardens into a nice hard finish that is easy to clean.

Before

After

The white mantel against the brick of the fireplace really pops, and completely changes the room. It’s like someone turned on the lights. My husband and mom both admitted it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately I can’t ask my father-in-law for his opinion.