My Dream Wall

Ever since I got a "nice" camera and started taking pictures, I knew that I wanted to have some prints put on canvas for that art gallery look.

THIS is what I want. These are some of my favorite pictures that I have taken/had taken and I think it would look swell with the W...it makes sense to me. Now, I just need to sell my first-born to be able to afford all the canvas prints I will need!

What are your thoughts? Is is too much? Obviously I/we are not afraid of going overboard but I don't want to take away from the "W" too much. Maybe if the canvases were more scattered instead of so uniform? Should I add some prints above the "W"? I want this to be our art wall.

Hmmm....help is needed.

Onto the fireplace I said we needed help with. This is the fireplace. While it looks fine and dandy as-is, it's way too traditional for our taste. We were thinking of taking off the entire white wood mantle and maybe doing some metallic mosaic tile to help reflect light, give dimension and give it some UMPH.

I'm not certain if we actually have a mantle since the art wall will be the focal point. Plus Jason has this hair-brained idea that he wants a flat-screen above the fireplace. Any and all suggestions are welcome!

Brought to you by the letter...

Yeah, so a certain someone that lives in my house and that I am betrothed to apparently doesn't read my blog that much. Hmm... Anyhow, this spouse of mine named Jason calls me up late yesterday afternoon to tell me he likes it. It caught me off guard because a) he started the conversation as if it were mid-conversation and b) what? what do you like?, I asked.

This is what he saw on my blog. But, because he has a wife that does graphic art for EVERYTHING so he can visualize it, could we possibly see about using a particular sleek, chic and swanky hotel's initial instead. Ask and you shall receive.

Jason didn't just like what he saw, he LOVED it and before I knew it, he had me assisting him on getting this wall done last night...at 10:00pm!

So, here's the thing, my mom got me this light projector at a store because I was wanting to sketch out some kind of cool mural onto my son's bedroom wall. Star Wars, I believe. Which turned into dinosaurs and volcanos and then quickly was replaced in my head with a pirate theme and guess what? Still no mural.

But I digress.

Here is how we did it:

I printed off a letter onto a sheet of white paper and placed it under the light projector so that it would reflect on the wall. I eyeball a lot of things since I can detect almost anything that is out of place with my naked eye (it becomes second nature when you do graphic art for a living). I then had Jason get a laser level to check to see if the top flat sides of the W were at least level and low-and-behold, my naked eye didn't fail me (I wonder what would have happened if I had used a clothed eye?).

We then proceeded to use the projected image and a laser level for me to tape it off. The taping, honestly, took about 15 minutes tops.

Then we needed to put a primer over the top of the navy (I think this particular wall, since we moved here, has now had 10 coats of paint within the W!) and painted the same color white that we have on our ceilings and baseboards. Oh and forgive my shirtless husband, he thought it would be funny to pose. And he isn't naked, he had his knickers on, I just didn't think the world was prepared for THAT.

BUT, since it is considered art to us, we used a semi-gloss paint to make it have a nice, bright semi-glossy surface against the navy wall.

See the difference?

Here it is with the tape freshly removed. This is what it looks like at night.

I totally love this since you can really get a good idea for what it looks like, especially how the image reflects off our floors.

LOVE IT! The only thing that I want to do now is get rid of all the switch plates/plugs, etc. I think we are just going to paint them all navy so they blend in with the wall and the focal point will be the W instead of all the "noise" around it.

Up Next: Fireplace needs help and I need your opinions!

Not for the Faint of Heart

Um, yeah. Well you see, it started out fine and dandy in our living room. We thought, "Oh, we'll just paint the room a cheery saffron yellow color"...it was a huge upgrade from the bland boring white that we bought in to. Then we fell in love with this over-the-top midnight navy and HAD to get it up on our dining room walls...formal dining rooms deserve a little drama after all. Then we thought, why not take the wall down between the formal dining room and the formal living room? We just weren't that formal that everything needed to be closed off. We are casual "come-as-you-are" types. So the wall came down and the navy was painted. The navy walls inspired us to rip up the carpet in the dining room, which led to chiseling away the tile in the front entry and powder bath which eventually meant that the laminate wood flooring would need to get out of town. After which we realized that all we did was make a huge mess and the job was bigger than we expected. So a phone call, more ripped up carpet (this time in the formal living room) and two days later, we were the recipients of beautiful sealed and wax concrete floors throughout the downstairs. Beautiful floor-to-ceiling ivory silk dupioni drops found a home in the dining room (thanks Jude and Mom!), my beloved zebra print ventured its way to the feature wall and it finally felt finished.

But wait, there's more...

So after lots of thoughts, color theory in my head (Cabernet purple was beginning to win out) for the living room, more thoughts, discussions with Jason, we decided that the formal living room had become the ugly duckling to our transformed kitchen (thank you Jason!) and the uber-classy/swanky/upscale dining room. Something had to change.

So I present to you, the new "belle of the ball" downstairs, our "formal" living room. She's classy. She's stylish. She's got the ability to hold her head up high to the kitchen and the dining room. And....and....we LOVE it!!

Navy walls are not for the faint of heart. You've got to have guts to go for it and the stamina to paint on primer first and then not one, not two but THREE coats of navy on the walls. You've got to be patient for it to take 6 days to dry before the streaky paint becomes uniform in color. You've got to like the "shock factor" as well when people walk into your home.

What do you think about the flow now from living room to dining room?

Oh and she got new lighting as well. Remember the ugly 80's gold and white fan in here before? The one with the light socket that NEVER would work? The one that made an annoying ringing sound every time you turned the fan on? It's gone forever and we don't miss it one bit. Halogen spots throughout! We even had it wired so the outside 4 were on one dimmer and the inside 4 were on the other dimmer so now we can set the mood no matter the occasion!

On the flip side, we still have a ton of work to do to get it finished. The stair railing is hideous. We continue to debate whether to give the existing railing a make-over until we decide what else we would like (Jason wants a sheet of glass to go down the sides...he's the "glass man" after all) or to just remove the railing and make it look like a modern staircase. Only thing is, doodlebop (aka Lawyer) likes to sprint (and I'm not kidding) from his room, down the stairs and into our bed at 3:00 in the morning and I would be worried about a little 4 year old falling flat on his face in the middle of the night from the top stair. I am not up for 3am visits to the ER.

We also need to give the fireplace a make-over as well. We were thinking of just removing the panels and replacing the tile but it's still being discussed. Oh and don't adjust the brightness on your monitor, that's really how dark the walls are at night!

The windows? Yeah, in the picture on the left (taking at night), you can't even tell we have windows since the walls are so dark they just blend together. The picture on the right just looks unfinished. So I believe more ivory silk dupioni floor-to-ceiling drapes are needed and perhaps a sheer, I haven't decided yet.

Here's another picture taken last night...see how dark it is behind the couch? I feel like I'm performing on stage, that's how the lighting and the room makes me feel...very dramatic..."Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love and I'll no longer be a Capulet. Tis but thy name that is my enemy..." I'll stop now. I never was much of a performer. But I do love Romeo and Juliet!

Oh and the true lighting test was how my camera would hold up at night. You see, I don't use a flash...EVER. So I grabbed my camera (which happened to have my 50mm lens) and went to shooting. Now, I did have to bump up the ISO all the way to 1600 and my aperture was wide open at 1.8 BUT the pictures still looked great! I would never have been able to take this picture in the lighter colored room with that hideous fan light without setting up a tripod and the pictures still would have been gross.

Okay so for this wall, we are thinking about going quirky, low-brow (I don't know, would it be considered low-brow? It's not really art, right?) and silly with a giant....

"W" on the wall. We haven't decided...what do you think? I think it brings the parlor effect down a notch and kind of makes it feel like you would be in some SoHo gallery or some uber-swank boutique hotel lounge...only, I've never been in a SoHo gallery or an uber-swank boutique hotel lounge so I don't even know what I'm talking about.

Oh and just for fun, let's look at my over-the-top entry light again...nothing new here that you haven't seen over a year ago....BUT I'm dying to paint the ceiling maybe the navy or even the Cabernet purple color...I don't care that chocolate brown would be right next to it either. Don't you think it would really set the stage?

Drum Roll, Please!

Presenting our newly re-done downstairs! We are done with the flooring and we could not be happier with the results. The floors and the simplicity of our stuff makes me feel like I like I live in an art gallery and we LOVE it. There are more things we would like to do (such as get rid of the hideous brass/white ceiling fan and replace the kitchen cabinets/countertops) but right now, we are content with everything as it is. So sit back and enjoy the Before and After pictures!

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Here are a few pics where you can really see the floor. I think what we love most about it are the imperfections that you can still see without it being overwhelming.

Whew! That wore me out just posting the pictures! We've got some yummy plans for our downstairs powder bath that is off the entry...I won't say anything about it until we get that done (not for a few months, we need a break!) but let's just say it will be over the top!