I wasn’t hiding the destroyed entryway from you, really. I just forgot about it.
Back when I moved in, I painted it a nice clean white, installed some quarter round trim, and displayed loads of wooden and brass frames (all spray painted white) with random photos from my personal collection.
This is no secret: Quarter round super glued to drywall is completely stupid. And the frames had to be double-sided-mounting-taped to the wall too, since the base of the trim-gone-shelf wasn’t wide enough to balance frames on. This was a project that I was satisfied with for all of… 2 weeks. And then I hated it. But I left it for about a year, slowly prying off the frames and emptying off the shelves before I carefully pryed the quarter round off the wall.
As I mentioned, I had super glued them on and that left me with a highly damaged wall. Bummer!
Oh well, nothing a little light patching can’t fix. I secretly love spackling and would consider earning a living on a construction crew if I could do this every day.
After that quick coat, a thorough sand (and re-coat and re-sand for good measure) I was left with a nice smooth wall. That I then proceeded to stare at for 2 months in spackle-happy state that is represented in this next photo. I wasn’t ready to just repaint the wall white again (because I was sure the white I had on hand wasn’t enough to do the whole wall, and likely wasn’t the same shade of white as the other walls in the entryway).
You can tell in that above photo that I was actually gearing up to paint the wall. And here’s how I decided what paint to use:
- I’m cheap. Or thrifty. Or resourceful. Yeah, resourceful. And when I have an extra half gallon of paint sitting on the shelf in the basement, you can be sure I’m going to find a reason to use it.
- I’m always trying to cross-pollinate my paint palette throughout the house. Cross-pollinate is the best word I can think of. I like to incorporate the palette throughout to make the transition from room to room feel more seamless. I don’t like theme rooms; it’s weird to walk into a room that doesn’t feel like it belongs with the rest of your home.
- The door is purple, and I briefly considered painting the wall purple too, but thought it might look too dark in the entryway given that the opposite wall with coat hooks is painted olive green like the living room wall you see poking into these pictures.
With those in mind, I chose blue. The blue that you saw in yesterday’s post about the guest room slash Cody’s room. There actually isn’t any of this bright, light blue downstairs yet (short of a few accent decor pieces) and I thought it would look really nice when put in closer proximity to the greenish walls and the purple door.
And it did. From a distance, the entryway radiates light and an ever-so-gentle shade of blue. It’s like a little ice in a room of warm greens and yellows, and I like the freshness of ice.
With the door open it looks pretty too:
Sidenote: That’s my favorite Amber Perrodin print in that white frame. Her etsy shop has a sweet deal this month: 30% off your purchase with offer code: BlockParty
Appropriately transitioning into print-chat, I’m planning to extend the stairwell gallery into the entryway, starting with these frames:
The eagle in the dramatic clouds won’t be staying, sorry. The frame was a recent garage sale find, and the print just happened to come with it. In any case, eagles or no eagles, I think the extension of the gallery will do a nice thing for the entryway.
I’ll be getting around to that project sooner or later. I’ll let you know how it goes.
27 Comments
You’re too good to me Emily! I usually pride myself on running around in my crazy mad creative state getting everything in the world accomplished. But dang. You my friend. Are on top of your game. Always dreaming, always scheming. LOVE it.
p.s. your window/paint chip masterpiece? brilliant.
No, no. You’re too good to ME. That art? It’s fab. I love those sailboats every single day! And the new frame for the smaller print is curing on the deck right now; pretty excited about it.
love th new color choice! looks pretty against all the other colors nearby it :-)
Hey, thanks Rach-dawgg!
Yay! I was secretly hoping you’d go with blue! (I’m on a blue and tan kick.) It looks awesome with all the colors around it :) And I like “cross-polinate”, too bad you didn’t use that phrase earlier, I’d have stolen it to use in my post about my house’s colors instead of “flow”. The way I phrased it sounded stupid/very Trading Spaces.
I love the soft blues in your house, Cait – especially #4 and #13 from your post on 5/25. It’s so fresh and light, and with the bold greens I thought it’d be a nice compliment. Glad you like!
Thanks Emily :) I love those two colors, too! That notebook image is from this post by The Little Things (a fantastic blog and the original source for this kitchen which is so popular on Pinterest) but I really want to introduce those colors into my house. I have a wicked huge crush on the Summer Sorbet we used in the bathrooms, so that might make its way into other areas…
My misinterpretation! The light blues are fab and would be great (with the tans) in your pad. I’m in love with that kitchen island in the photo though (and have been considering colors for my own lately).
No worries! I speed read and wind up misinterpreting things constantly :)
I love the island, too! My kitchen is way too tiny for anything like that, which obviously means you need to paint yours a bright color so I can live vicariously! ;) I vote…. blue! (You saw that coming, right?)
I’d paint it blue in a heartbeat except the kitchen was originally 5 shades of blue when I moved in and consequently made the gray/black countertop look very blue. The blue effect was very odd and I’m afraid of putting any blue even near the kitchen these days.
Maybe green? It’s my other go-to color. Or bright yellow. (I’m so helpful…)
My cabinets are giving me some anxiety. They’re so ugly, maybe I just have to paint them and then I can incorporate more color into the kitch :( Maybe mocha brown? Or Orange? ORANGE.
Oh I love painted cabinets! If you need someone to bounce ideas off of I’d love to listen! Mocha sounds fun! Maybe you could coat the counters (I think Rustoleum makes a good kit, I have no idea what our house’s former owner used, but it has held up well.) I love this kitchen, and Erica’s from Urban Grace Interiors is lovely, too.
Dang I don’t think my second link worked. This is her kitchen.
Amazing kitchen at that link. Love all of it.
Also- Orange would be very fun, too! I’m not sure my kitchen would pull it off, but I bet you could make it awesome :)
Are you thinking painted cabinets or painted island? Because I could go either way with the colors we’ve mentioned. Orange cabinets were recently considered, but I’m worried about resale value. Should I be?
I think either painted cabinets or painted island would be great! (Or even both- you could paint the cabinets a neutral and have the island pop or vice versa).
I wouldn’t worry as much about resale value. Any potential buyer could easily repaint the cabinets (or when the time comes, if you’re feeling super nice you could offer to paint them white/some other neutral if they’d prefer).
I think this kitchen is lovely, you could paint the cabinets a light tan (there I go with tan again) and then the island would be the star if you painted it a bold color (like, wait for it… blue). But I love the idea of orange, bright yellow, etc etc too. I’m just too much of a wuss to paint anything in my kithchen that color. At least so far.
Break out of wuss. Everything’s fixable. That’s what I’m going to be telling myself when I start to paint those stinkin’ cabinets. That’s right, I said it, it’s gotta happen.
Tan does sound nice. Maybe some shade of “sandy”. Hmm.
Ok, so maybe truthfully it’s not so much “wuss” as it is that I think my tiny kitchen needs to have white cabinets. (At least until we finish the patio and guest bath and maybe hall bathroom floor, then I might convince Robert we need to work on the kitchen. But shhhhhhhhh!)
Yay cabinet painting! I think I vote for some shade of “sandy”. And then you can do a super bright island, which will be amazing! And then maybe after that I can hurl ideas for backsplashes at you… mwhahahaha.
I think white is needed for mine too :-/ Although maybe I’ll get more daring; I’m about to sort through the paint chips (that I didn’t use in the headboard herringbone).
What if you painted the shelves&brackets white and the cabinets a light or medium tan color? You could paint the walls a light color (don’t worry, I won’t suggest and icy blue *wink*) and then the island a bold color.
looks fantastic! LOVE the blue and it totally is “icy!” That HUGE frame is amazing! Can’t wait to see what you put in that!
The blue looks great! I especially love how it looks with the door open. The color combination and contrast is so fun.
Thank you Kate!
P.S. Cute dog pics lately on your FB.
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