The single easiest and possibly most dramatic way to transform a room (or a house!) is to buy a can of paint and apply it to the walls. I adore painting.  I love taping to get a room ready, I love opening the can and putting the wooden stick in to stir it, then pouring it onto my paint tray.  But the magic truly happens when I roll that first coat on the wall.  That’s the point of no return and the point when you see how beautiful the new room will be.

Momma Schmitt is busy transforming her living room with paint.  It’s already looking fantastic!

And ignore the toys all over the floor, just keeping it real. If it’s between 8 in the morning and 8 in the evening, there’s no getting away from them. But other than those little details… isn’t it just a marvelous change? Come on say it.. Oh la la! The color we went with is Sherwin Williams 7534 Outerbanks. I love it, It just infuses light and warmth into the room.

From white walls with a red focus wall to a soft green all around is a perfect decision!  LOVE!

From our Shak to yours, wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Photo by simplyla.

Are you the kind of person who likes non-traditional Christmas trees?  Do you love reading and have a vast book collection?  If you answered yes to these questions, building a Christmas tree of books could be in your future!  From Jason Boog of GalleyCat, here’s an idea that looks creative, easy, and inspiring!

It is a simple but powerful way to show your support for print books and bookstores in this digital age.

What book would you put at the top of your tree? Mine would be Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey!

When I think of mirrored walls, all I’m able to muster is the walls on popular design shows that have to be taken down.  The 12×12 squares that sometimes have patterns around the edges must go!

However, there has been a resurgence in mirrored designs, according to 97Sullivan.

Mirrors really open up a space and reflect the light, which makes small spaces feel much larger and dark spaces feel much brighter.

Truly the images shown on the post are gorgeous.

When we finally tackled painting the huge job of tearing down the heinous wallpaper from my kitchen walls, I was determined to get a light yellow color, then hang a Tuscany-like framed picture and clock.  We bought paint chips and worked hard.  In the end, our walls were the EXACT color of the yellow post-it notes.

Nancy Mitchell also shares a cautionary tale about selecting paint colors on Apartment Therapy,

About halfway through, Rachel articulated a worry already taking shape in my own mind – namely, that the color was super, super light. “Is it supposed to look like this? I can hardly tell which parts of the wall I’ve already painted.” I hated to admit that she was right. The only discernible difference between the painted and non-painted parts of the wall was that the painted parts were shiny and wet. “Keep on painting!” I urged. “Maybe it’ll be darker when it dries.” My aqua dream died hard.

Where Nancy did repaint, our walls remain post-it note yellow!

Photo from New Life Office.

Label it vintage and call your parents! They’ll be proud that you’ve hung old family photos in your home whether it’s artsy or just fun.  From amusing by kimberly,

After painting my room, I immediately wanted to spray paint all of my picture frames white and hang them back up. However, a sad impediment arose when I discovered we only had one barely-filled can of spray paint. Therefore, I was only able to spray one frame when the whistling sound of air began emitting from the can and no paint followed.

Her photo collage project will be quite nice when done. Showing two photos…

This

to this…

Nice job, Kimberly!

A friend of mine has a log cabin next to a bubbling stream.  If this isn’t idyllic enough, the inside has a long, warm kitchen with a long, warm table in which you could spend hours talking, laughing, and reminiscing.

The kitchen table is central in the comfort of a home.  It can be elegant or whimsical.  It can be plastic, metallic, or wood.  And it can be changed if you’re not feeling the love.

While the table featured at Ikea Hackers is a coffee table, you can gain inspiration for an interesting kitchen table right here.

The finish on this coffee table had a way of collecting and showing off dust, fingerprints, and crumbs like you wouldn’t believe. It was driving me nuts so I decided to decoupage the top to add color, texture, and dimension to an otherwise boring table.

I would suggest book covers, newspapers with significant headlines or photos, or magazine covers as a possible table cover. Click through to read the directions on applying the new table top and good luck!

I don’t often talk about furniture design in my life or in my writing, but twice this weekend I’ve talked about shabby chic.  I had a table I moved from my old office that could use a second coat of paint.  I told my husband I liked it as it is because it’s “shabby chic”!  Then another friend said she was interested in some old children furniture because … you guessed it … it was shabby chic!

My taste in furniture is opposite Wabibito’s!

The style of the house has morphed into, what I will call, “sophisticated European rustic”.  If you’ve never heard of this style before, it’s because I just made it up.  I would describe it as Scandinavian minimalist, punctuated by vintage French pieces and anchored by classic pieces in the style of Ralph Lauren.  (I was racking my brain trying to characterize his style – how would you describe it?)

Your choice?  Sophisticated European Rustic or Shabby Chic?

January 2011 has brought the Spring Cleaning bug to our house!  It started easy enough… we decided to rearrange our bedroom that has had the same design for the last seven and a half years.  We have vacuumed so much dust out that if there was a way to glue it together, it could be formed into a small dog.

Once we got a couple of pieces moved, we decided that some of the furniture could go.  Where to put it has opened new doors for us.  One piece of furniture in the bedroom can become a work table in the hobby room.  That means the desk now in that room can be cleaned up and sold.  That means I’ll have to get yet another room cleaned and organized!

Our house will have a completely new look in the coming weeks.  And not one paint brush has been lifted.  Not one piece of crown molding has been hammered into place.  Not one new light fixture has been installed.

The Goon Room is up to the same,

It’s amazing the amount of crap that you accumulate – especially when you have kids. It becomes very apparent after Christmas and birthdays when there is an influx of new toys and clothes. Or after a growth spurt where the “too small” clothes are tangled in a pile with the new clothes.

A home makeover can be as simple as a good deep clean and rearranging furniture.

Get to it for 2011!

Photo by dalbera through flickr creative commons.