Well, by now I should have more completed than a painted shoe cabinet. But that is about as far as I have come over the last week. I must admit, I am feeling a little nervous and anxious as the weeks roll by and things are moving slower than I anticipated. The next few weeks are going to be buuuuuusy but we are still up for the challenge.
Before I get to the shoe cabinet, two quick updates to note before I change my mind about the two updates....
- My initial fabric choice that was my driving color combo behind everything I am doing in both the kitchen and living area, is on back-order. Like for quite awhile back-order. This is really throwing me for a loop and has really prevented me from mentally moving forward. Silly thing is that the fabric is being used for a total of two pillows. That's right, fabric for two little ol' pillows is causing me to stumble. So I started ordering more swatches and even more swatches... We need color!
- Me wavering on the wall color is probably driving you all about as crazy as it is driving me. Some days I LOVE it, some days I feel meh about it. And I am quickly discovering that I am either awful with my camera, or it just doesn't photograph true. Probably the first one, or the fact that the color has fifty various personalities. Anyway, I am giving it about one more week of layering and if I still don't really truly love it, I am going to paint it. Which is scary right? The real problem is that I don't know what color I would rather have on my walls to pair with the already installed white cabinets and slate gray island and now slate gray shoe cabinet. Some days it gets to me, but most days I realize that there are much bigger life problems than a silly paint color, soooo, moving on.
One thing I am sure about is that I totally dig our freshly painted shoe cabinet!
With the entire kitchen/living room renovation, we always planned on bringing in a couple new pieces of furniture, but also have to use many of our existing items. The shoe cabinet and school cubbies (white credenza) both provide us with great storage and needed to come back into the space. But now that we have white cabinets in the kitchen, I don't want all white furniture in the adjoining living space.
I decided to take a small risk and paint our IKEA shoe cabinet. I brought our island door sample to Sherwin Williams and had them color match to their ProClassic Enamel paint. The goal is to start marrying the two spaces, so the gray was my instant gut choice. So happy with it!
Because I was so happy about the outcome of our painted dining room hutch, I followed the same steps and wasn't afraid of painting such a high traffic piece of furniture. This paint goes on like butta and cures nice and hard for a durable finish.
To quickly go over those steps again, I started by giving the entire cabinet a coat of primer. I prefer Zinsser Oil Based - Bond Coat. No sanding required to get started is a thumbs up from me.
Once the primer was dry, I gave the cabinet two coats of the gray enamel. I used a brush for a few of the grooves and used a small microfiber roller for the rest. I find the microfiber rollers coat well and don't leave the small bubbles that come with foam rollers.
Two coats total and it was completely done. I only painted the outside of the cabinet, I didn't see a need to mess with the inside where all the dirty shoes are thrown. And I only sanded a few small spots where dust or puppy hair landed, otherwise, I probably could have done without sanding all together.
As the second coat was still drying, I held the previous hardware up to the new paint color. There was zero contrast between the two. (Hardware was originally purchased here.)
So I grabbed my tube of Rub 'n Buff and a pile of cotton swabs and gave the hardware a little gold attention.
The hardware definitely paired beautifully with the gray.
The colors of the walls and cabinet in the images above are pretty spot on. The moment I step away... not quite the same. #tipswelcome Let's blame the lack of window treatments and not my photography.
I also realize that my mirror is hung too low. I was thinking of adding a sconce above, but have since changed my mind. So ignore the low mirror, it should be fixed next update.
Now, let's chat a bit about the room layout and the sofa. Last week I had some questions regarding the sectional and our current seating plans.
When we purchased our sectional a few years ago, we purchased something we knew we would love regardless of the space and room it was in. After we got it home, it became more and more clear that we preferred our new, smaller sectional to the larger leather one in the basement (due to comfort and style). Our home has always given us layout challenges, divided kitchen wall or not, but no matter how I mapped it out I just couldn't make our favorite piece of furniture work with the new open concept. It would either have to live tight to the backs of the barstools or tight to the window. Once that wall came down, we were happy to move the sofa to our lower level and bring the old faux-leather sectional up to the garage to be sold on Craigslist. In fact, because the lower living area was basically a blank slate, we brought down all of our main level furnishings, including the chair, coffee table and rug. Suddenly the basement felt lighter yet warmer and everything seemed to fit perfectly, like it was always meant to be. Phew.
The sale from that sectional and storage ottoman was designated to fund the new sofa. I looked and looked and looked some more. Almost every sofa we both agreed on, measured to be too long for the space. Because we already knew what we were looking for from our previous sectional search a few years ago, we decided to keep many of the same criteria, with the exception of possibly adding a tufted back and rolled arms this time around. I finally narrowed it down to two options; one from Macy's and another from Home Decorators. We went and sat on the Macy's option and it was comfortable but I wasn't sure that the upholstery would hold up because the display model was looking loose and "loved". When Home Decorators had a 20% off upholstery sale plus a free shipping code on the back of their catalog, I decided to order it and hold my breath.
Although the couch looks small in photos, it is almost six feet wide and the arms take up very little of that space. We have seated three adults comfortably, and the boys and I are all able to snuggle on it together without issues. We will also have a chair near the window just as we did with our previous layout. The new sofa leaves us with about three feet of open space near the window and almost four feet to the future island stools. Plenty of room for the boys to run laps.
Being that we have two living areas, we are happy to know that we can use our main space for day-to-day shenanigans and for hosting friends and family with the open layout and amount of seating in the dining room and at the island. Major family snuggle sessions and movie watching can happen in our lower level on our loved sectional. Overall, we are pretty smitten with how it all worked out.
And as you can see above, the built-ins haven't been started yet. Plans are drawn up and finger nails are being bitten but I am trying to remain confident in our DIY abilities. I also brought in our old coffee table which was ultimately going to be a deck table but I wanted to see how it would fit here. I may end up using one of our round ones instead or changing the glass out with a wood or upholstered top. Although the furniture still seems a little choppy, an area rug should be the piece to pull everything together. Decision making is at an all time high the next few weeks. Time to stock our new wine rack!
P.S. My boys are into playing Wheel of Fortune right now which I totally love. P.P.S. My eight year old believes that mis-matched socks are the cool "thing", which I also love because they were when I was a kid also. Some things never change....
OK, I have jabbered enough today. Let's take a long coffee break to check out all of the other amazing One Room Challenge participants below.
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