And One Year Ago Today...Part II

In the days after we closed on the new house, we began to feel that we might as well move into Lowes and Home Depot. We did a lot of searching for just the right paint colors, we had to get all the painting supplies, and we needed more boxes and tape!

Here is the bedroom sitting room as it looked in March--before we closed. The sellers were in the process of moving out. The walls were a color called Chaps Suede--the same as the living room and upper dining room. The bookeshelves were a kind of light green-blue. We thought it was too much contrast. Although it looked good with the sellers furniture when we first saw the house.




I wanted something warmer and not quite as dark. MLC and I ran around the house on Friday, April 28, 2006, with those three-color paint samples--the ones with the holes in them. For the master bedroom/sitting room, we chose a light color called Champagne Glee. The wall of the fireplace, we painted the middle color, called Badlands Taupe, and the bookshelves were painted the darkest on the sample, called Victorian Rose. In some light, these colors are pinker than I thought they would be, but they are light and warm--making the rooms seem very airy--even in the winter-time. Here is the sitting room after we moved in. More books have gone on the shelves since the picture was taken, but it is otherwise about the same.

The master bath was the same green as the bookshelves in the sitting area. It was very striking with the purple curtains. But there was no purple in the tile, and it was dark in the morning.

Still, the sellers made a lovely room there with the candles and the towel rack in the corner. I am still planning on doing something like the that in wrought iron. I have to save my pennies up!

MLC noticed that the Badlands Taupe picked up a color in the tile border, so we painted the master bath that color--except the corner wall by the shower (right in the picture) is the Victorian Rose.

The water closet had pure white walls and one purple wall. That seemed too stark for us. I painted the water closet the Champagne Glee and the purple wall is now Victorian Rose.

Painting a bathroom is a real project, let me tell you! We had to take the medicine cabinet down. And getting a ladder into a 4' X 2.5' water closet without removing the toilet was a challenge. Especially in order to reach those 10' ceilings! But it came out looking nice! The after picture was taken really "after"--I mean after we got the new tub in!

Thanks for indulging my nostalgia about the weeks in which we picked out colors and painted. And made at least one trip a day to a home-improvement store! At the time it felt frantic because we had a deadline for moving in. But I also remember the fun we had--picnicing on our new dining room floor. Camping out in the living room. Driving back to Albuquerque at dusk when the deer were feeding by the road. It was a pretty good time.

NOT that I want to do that again any time soon!