9x's a charm paint color and lamps?

We were busy this past weekend painting away and it was still quite a challenge for me to get the right shade but thank the heavens! we are finally there. 

I found these lamps recently at Home Sense as well and do utterly love them completely, the glass, the greyish linen drum shade but am unsure if they are the right style for the living room. So the question is do I keep them anyway and find a place for them somewhere else if not the living room since they suit the Nantucket beach half of my style or return them to find something else? I just placed them on top of our living room mantel that has been removed temporarily while we did the floors to snap a pic catching the chandelier in the background that will be in the dining room to see how they may or may not coordinate.

I wanted to show you why I'm proud of my honey's work. When he removed the crumbly plaster and drywalled the mouldings did not lay flush against the walls in many places. Some guys would just slap them on and fill the gaps with tons of caulking but not my guy, he made a precision profiled shim to fill the space correctly.  All these little things are time consuming but we want to do it right not fast.

So after testing many versions of blue I finally got  the hue right by custom mixing a couple of colors I'd tested that was not to powder blue, not too green or grey and painted a larger area to be sure, lived with it for half a day and then realized it was too dark for me, heck I was having a hard time putting any paint on the walls truth be told. I get my way most of the time but Todd simply will not live in an all white home, it just feels to cold to him.

and alas, without telling him I lightened it up, and rolled it on a full wall. Unfortunately he noticed the difference before I finished the wall, was not pleased that I didn't mention it but in the end he liked it and when the entire room was done, kept telling me how much he likes it.

YES! Now I can't tell you how sublime this color is. It is truly the most pretty shade of robin's egg blue I've ever seen and I'm not just saying that because it is my very own custom shade, 

I just love it especially against all the white of the coffered ceiling and the extra high base boards.

I feel so blessed!

 The discs on the backs of the sconces were painted out as well to let their pretty scalloped shape shine.

I am really happy we put them in this room.

 We still have to paint the rest of the trim but we just could not help ourselves and placed some of our furniture in to see how it would feel. 

I originally wanted to just have blinds on the window but wonder if curtains will look better. 

I also wanted the right shade of blue that was not too cool when looking into the kitchen

I think Todd is going to work on the built-ins this weekend for either side of the sofa. 

I told him that if I had known that it would take this much money, blood, sweat and tears when we first bought our home, I don't know if I would have bought our home. But now that we are seeing the fruits of our labour become more than what we ever imagined,  I am so glad we did.

I'm not sure how people can rip out all the wonderful character in an old home to create a modern home. To me there is nothing like the character of original trims and hardware. We were so lucky to find a home that had not been stripped of it's beauty.

And now that I've chosen my perfect shade of heavenly blue this pretty chandelier will be moved into the dining room and the hallway will get painted a neutral warm cream or tan color to balance the blue living and dining rooms and tie in with the warm tones in the backsplash and granite in the kitchen.
I will replace the chandelier with my all time favourite light, a moravian star light.

and last but not least this is a little sneak of a wonderful decorative accent that I also found at Home Sense the same day as the lamps. Although I love to decorate with shells, I don't want our home to be to themey, just the suggestion of a the beach and this guy does just that for me.

Hope you are having a great week.

I'm still not sure where to view my dashboard on the new blog format and would love to read what your up to lately if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear if you could leave me a comment I would appreciate it.
Thanks!

New Blogger, dashboard missing, Help!

Hi all!

Since I was up a little earlier than I'd liked on my day off I decided to do a little reading of all your wonderful blogs (which I don't seem to get as much time to do as I'd like lately) but I can't seem to find my dashboard.
I will go on the internet searching for my answer but if anyone has the same problem or tips I would love to here!

Hood Heaven

Oh my, they've gone and changed the blogging format again, let's hope I can navigate it ok. 

 I was not a kitchen designer over 9 years ago when I designed our kitchen and didn't even know about the work triangle, the National Kitchen and Bath Association or it's guidelines but I did know I wanted a custom hood similar to the one in the incredibly talented Brian Gluckstein's own home along with the same style details as his cabinets.  I wanted to create the same shelves as these as well but I won't get into that. Actually the hood was the same as the cabinetry originally but I guess Brian needed a balance to the darker cabinetry and later painted it chalkboard black. 

(I still want those shelves)

We first  installed  a standard range hood that usually goes under a cabinet 24" off the stove surface and later on Todd built the custom canopy. 

24" clearance was ok when  it was just the range hood but when we added the canopy made out of plywood it was not to code since it was not a fire proof material.

We knew we had to eventually fix it and that stainless steel would be expensive both material and labour wise so we came up with another more cost effective answer.

A friend of Todd's who owns this contraption called a break which is used to create aluminum soffit and other things like siding  came by and they got to work  bending a inexpensive roll of aluminum sheeting to fix my design flaw.

and would you just  look at what I came home to!

The workmanship was nothing short of a truly professional job that not only makes our hood completely safe now but is a thing of beauty.

 I had told Todd that we will add molding to the bottom of the hood after and so they wrapped the 

metal up only 1" but when I came home I was so shocked at how good it looked and was sooooo

frustrated that I hadn't been there as I very well might have told them to make it larger and keep it instead of the molding

All wrapped up and covered oh so nicely.

Of course  you can buy interior fan components for custom hoods so you don't have to do what we did. 

Ah well, live and learn.

One day I hope to have a stainless gas range and will feel confident cooking underneath such a beautiful hood.

Last weekend I put two coats of paint on the living room's coffered ceiling and did almost all the caulking on the trim and it just about killed me, took me the entire week to recover but I am giddy over how it's looking. We installed a well priced ceiling fan and I am not sure about it as it doesn't seem to be strong enough. I think it does add a nice casual vibe to the space without overwhelming this smallish room.

Time is my enemy and the longer it takes for a room to come together, then I start to question my choices to be. I guess I have to realize that sometimes you have to try something and not be afraid to fail if it is not right the first time.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Beach House Blues and shabby sconces

Hello! I hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend.

I have been trying to find the perfect blue for our living and dining room while Todd has been sanding down the original baseboards, prepping them for paint. Together we looked at colour chips over and over, ok, well I looked over and over and Todd would say, yeah, maybe that will look good. Excited he likes my suggestion of Benjamin Moore's Seafoam, I get a sample can and paint it on the wall. He looks at it and says that he can't even see it and doesn't like it. It is on the far left below. 

Then I think, ok well maybe we should not even consider so light as it seems to look to precious next to the kitchen and so I try the opposite of my idea for our space.

 So off I go to get a computer match done of a coloured card I have carried around in my purse for quite some time, which I love the colour of. I put it on the wall only to realize that it is 

waaaaaay tooo dark for me. So I think hey why don't I just lighten it up myself  

   by mixing 1 part paint to 2 parts of plain base which gives me the colour on the right.

and I still find it a little dark still and not quite right tone I wanted.

The small square chip is Benjamin Moore's Ocean Air and the colour I'm going for is very similar just not as dark.

Then I took a break from the stress of figuring out a paint 

colour while Todd worked on  stripping the windows.

 and so I decided to place a few pieces in the room to create 

the feeling I wanted.

And then I remembered.......   

stored in the attic,  

two shabby chic antique glass light sconces that my

 father gave me many years ago that we had  rewired and never installed anywhere.

So I had begged Todd to install one, yes just one, on the left side of the pocket doors as we had not wired for one on the other side. 

Since the TV is going in the corner to the right side of the pocket doors,  I had envisioned an industrial style single sconce only but once we got a look at how amazing this looked, we  realized that we needed to install the other one.

When we had the sconces rewired professionally, they had to attach a round plate to the back for the bracket to have something to attach the electrical box to the light. It will get painted out the same colour as the wall and I'm hoping will unnoticeable. I just love the silver patina and the glass bolts as well as the little flip switch on the bottom  (that is no longer aloud to function by code).

I have to confess that the wall colour in the dining room is really awful looking to me now and I can't wait to get it painted too.

I do like that I can see it from the kitchen as well. Todd had suggested putting them in our hallway upstairs but I didn't want to place them somewhere where I couldn't enjoy them more often. 

and now here they are in a pair. I just love symmetry and I also

 think they will visually link the the living room to the dining room when we have a nice chandelier hanging in the place of the hurricane lantern. 

So back to the paint colours.

  I ask Todd to run and get a sample of Para's Kangaroo Eyes for me, a colour that would look like a deeper Seafoam colour. 

When he returns he tells me that the girl couldn't get the formula to work so she took one of their paint chips of their lines and matched it and mixed it up!

(between me and you I think my honey is a little colour blind)

I was hesitant but tried it anyway and it wasn't a good match for the colour chip afterall. I was a little peeved and was going to return it and get my money back but then realize that one colour was a little too blue grey and the other was a little blue green.

So I got creative again and mixed up without measuring accurately the supposed Kangaroo Eyes with some of my previously lighter custom colour and WHALA! I found my perfect colour which is at the far left.

Now I have my fingers crossed that someone can computer match this exactly because it will be too complicated to duplicate the formula the way I did it.

It is so perfect, not too grey, not too green, not too light or dark,

just PERFECT!

Well there is much prep still to do before the painting and I am praying that I can get my custom colour mixed up no problem.

Second time stain

Hello! Today the sun is shining brightly and it lifts me up.

We have successfully restained the floors and here they are with two coats of water based gloss poly. I will not lie and say this was an easy time this past bit, just the opposite exactly. The process had me spending an entire day custom mixing up stain colours last weekend to find the right combo. The result is one that suits our home beautifully and the feeling I'm going for.

Sorry if my paragraphs aren't consistent, but every time I go to another picture to type it won't keep the same allignment that I had previously and I don't have time to research how to fix that.

Ok, so please ignore the wall colour here as it does nothing for the floors and it will be changed of course but you can see that this water based stain goes on so even. Maple is a hard floor to stain without blotchiness and I am thrilled with the coverage.  Todd has been doing an amazing job  retrimming out the doors and it is quiet a challenge as the drywall is flat unlike the previous plater walls and the trim was warped and since we want to keep all we can of the original materials he works hard to make it look perfect!

The colour also works very well with the pocket doors that are a deep amber shellac and we are keeping them original and not painted them out.

Since there are two more coats of poly to go on, I can't place anything in the room to give you a colour prospective but my peace lily is a good comparison for you to see. I really did toy around with the idea of a darker stained more brown floor but just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Our kitchen was once a deep rich brown and it showed every scratch and water spot, a nightmare quite honestly. They look nice in pictures but they are  just  not me and  our 2nd level floors are a rich golden honey oak  which I was keeping in mind  when I made my final decision for better flow in our home.

We had a great big discussion one night past, and concluded that if we were to do it all over again, would do so many things differently (had money allowed) such as renovating the entire main level at one time and not in steps like we have done. It is too stressful to live in one room while you reno the others, trying to keep dust and mess from ruining your previous hard work and we would not have had this flooring fiasco trying to match up two different floors.  I envy those who have been able to do just that.

Have a great day!