Changes Afoot! (Folks...I Am Finally Painting the Living Room)

Good morning!

It's a bank holiday, so I know some of you are reading this from the comfort of a day-off of work-- what did you decide to do with your day off? Wash the car? Run some errands? I have decided to go off my ding dang rocker and paint the house. The living room and kitchen, specifically. AAAH, WHY LISA, WHY. Can't you just lay in the bed like normal folks, eating bon bons and flipping through US Weekly in your leisure time (FYI, replace that with lemon sorbet, and I totally did that on Saturday). Five years with Miami blue cerulean in the living room has been about two too many...I was so happy when the couches were gold and the blue was a beautiful counterpoint to their Graceland-like over-the-top-ness, and my walls the colors of a glam rock three piece suit. However, I think a change will do me some good, so I'm heading out in a few minute to choose paint colors with my dad). I AM Towanda, but as you may well know, it takes as long to bake a good batch of cookies as it does to bake one where you used too much salt and they taste like cardboard. In the one day that I have off, I want to metaphorically bake some prize-winning cookies, so we're going to Pappy for the know how I'm going to need to get through this!

Take a picture, folks-- it'll last longer! Let's have a long last look at my front room in its "blue" period.

I think I'm going to set up the living room exactly like I have it now, just with a different wall color, so I took photos to remind me exactly how far things were apart/how close to the wall/how near each other. I might change up this wall arrangement with some of the kooky accouterments from other parts of the house, but I might just put them back as is. With off white, some of my crazier flea market hauls might be just the pop of color the room needs! See how much better my new phone camera is at taking pictures in low light situations? I myself am impressed. That round woven rug is one of my favorite things in the house, though you wouldn't know it to look at it-- it took about four different idea for this one to finally sink in as perfect! And it needs a rug-- there's a weird dark stain in the hardwood from where my parents tried to fill a kerosene space heater indoors in the eighties' (valuable lesson learned: do not fill kerosene space heaters indoors, even if it IS freezing outside).

I know, I know, I still need to get rid of those nasty white blinds in the front window-- and truth told, I wouldn't mind a pair of marigold colored curtains to match the accent chair there. What kind of blinds would you go with in the front window? I think I should thin out some of the barware on the bar cart-- while the penguin icebucket, martini shaker, high ball glasses and wine glasses get a lot of use, most of the other glasses were impulse buys at estate sales. If I'm not inviting the entire office of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price over for cocktails, I should be all right (miss you til I join you, Lane Price, RIP). On the coffee table is that Claude Rains book I was telling you about, a book of horror comics from the fifties', and the book that got me started on this whole craze, Entertaining is Fun!, by Dorothy Draper. I'll have to do a whole post some time on the book and the magnificent DD herself as I've been using her books as a kind of manual for living, but there's a chapter in this book that exhorts the reader, in the course of encouraging them to make their home inviting, to "pick up a paintbrush and not read another line until the [room] is painted!". How did she know I'd been dragging my feet for weeks/months/years on this? DD makes the call, I just follow through with it. Au revoir, what once was! Bienvenue, what will be!

The pictures haven't 100% demonstrated, in their well-lit clarity, how blue the room is. It's a blue that almost blends in with the lighter parts of the couch, and make the turquoise and cobalt parts of the fabric look dull and flat instead of the snappy color they were when I found them in (coincidentally) a white living room on the other side of town. I've been like, "NO, NO, NO, I must find ANOTHER COLOR, some color OTHER than white," but honestly, I think it's ok, amongst the popsicle box like variety of colors in my house, to have one room that is more ivory than iridescent in its splendor. Am I wrong? I think I'm going to look for a white with a little pink in it-- white is white is white to me, I've never been one to wring hands over "oatmeal" versus "ostrich feather", but I will know the color I'm looking for when I see it. So take a long last look at the blue-- I may be crying to you tomorrow morning about the outrageous folly I've committed against both my living room and mankind, but hopefully, I'll be happier and possessed of a brighter living room this time tomorrow. We can hope, anyway!

You've seen the before (minus that wall with the tv and the record console on it, but I told you about that in the last post about redoing my house, and I didn't take a very good picture anyway...use your imagination)...now the before-after? The after-before? This is what it looks like after the furniture is moved but BEFORE I'm planning on painting it tomorrow:

AAAAACK. NO. SO DISORIENTING. My OCD tendencies are probably going to kill me before nightfall tomorrow, but hopefully I'll be too busy counting paint strokes to have an actual heart attack. We're going to drape cloth all these bad boys and avoid them with extreme prejudice during the painting process. I've removed some things to the green room office (so bad, I can't even show you..it's like Hoarders in there right now from the influx of wall hangings and the bar cart, etc), and some other furniture to the den. I left a foot path though, and I'll put things to rights by tomorrow night (I hope!):

Great balls of fire! I have my work cut out for me, don't I?!

All right kids, let's have it with the words of encouragement-- best painting or home improvement project you've embraked upon successfully? What are your tips for keeping your sanity in the chaos? Know any cheats to "cutting in" or masking out lightplates with extreme precision? What color have you most enjoured or most regretted in your room painting days? Am I going to make it through alive? I hope so! I'll have to let you know. :)

Keep a good thought for me! More from the other side of this painting adventure tomorrow (hopefully)! Talk soon. Til then!