A Day Off

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Nowadays, having “the day off” from work hardly means that I get to actually spend time doing leisure activities. Instead, I’m usually hard at work on the house. And then I take a nap or take the dog to the park and allow myself to do a little leisure reading before getting right back to DIY.

Since I have “the day off” today, I’m taking advantage of the sunlight and photographing a few projects I’ve been meaning to show you. You see, I get most of my DIY done at night, which is less than flattering for a before & after. For example, the original tan paint color in the entryway, living room, and hallway turns cavernous at night. This is how things look when peeking down the stairs (with boxes in the way while I was trying to block the dog from walking on the fresh paint on the steps):

I don’t hate the paint color at all. It’s the perfect tan; not too yellow, not too pink. In fact, I’ve been asked many times to share the color so you can try it out too (which by the way is Sandy Shell by Valspar, color matched at Home Depot to Behr paint). But the problem has always been that at night, it’s just so dark in the house, it starts to creep me out, and I think a brighter color will better suit the space.

Sometimes you don’t see these kinds of mistakes until after you’ve lived in the house for a while. It’s a common tip for new homeowners – try living in the house a bit and you’ll start to understand what you should change without going through four different shades. I’ve done this on more than one occasion – re-painting the study-o, painting the stairs, and now, once again, painting the living room (when I first moved in I picked out an awful yellowy beige that just made everything look sour, and then I found Sandy Shell).

To give the new paint color a test drive, I had my mom paint one of the walls in the hallway while I worked on the stairs. The plan was to just paint the one wall, give it a few weeks, and decide whether or not it was the right shade before painting the rest of the living room and entryway. I’ve decided I love it. So, I painted the opposite wall in the hallway. Bingo – the room gets flooded with light:

Between this, the black door, and the stairs, the entryway is really coming along. And I’m pretty happy about it since that was one of my goals for 2013:  to give myself a much more inviting welcome home.

I have a few more walls to tackle yet, so I’m starting on the smaller nook today (ignore the dusty mess on the floor – the hazards of DIY paint prep). Don’t forget, another update on the staircase challenge is posting tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing everyone’s progress!