Here's a snap of the new hallway rug from West Elm in action. I am going rogue and using it without a rug pad. I'll probably eat my words when I slip on it once of these days. It's a perfect shade of orange and it looks great with everything else I have going on. Here's to 2012's color of the year!
PS: I totally centered the rug after I took this photo. It looks much less awkward now.
via www.westelm.com
I blame the uninspired title of this post on the fact that Katy Perry and Russell Brand are getting a divorce and Firework (from her album Teenage Dream) is one of my favorite songs to shake it to while playing Just Dance.
Anyway, the actual point of this post is that I just ordered a rug. I've wanted a runner for my hall and this tangerine number from West Elm is perfect (and the price is fantastic). Orange is one of my favorite colors and I'm going to take advantage of the fact that it is the color of the year 2012 and snap up lovely accesories like this.
Happy New Year, people!
This light is named Lido. I'm not sure what a famous showgirl extravaganza has to do with this fixture. The only thing I can think of is that a lot of folks must purchase it to replace the ubiquitous boob lights. The fixture I'm replacing doesn't fall into this category, but it's vintage in a way that doesn't really work with my taste. I'm looking forward to brightening things up. But, before I do that I'll have to get over my utter terror of electricity!
This project is from a couple of weeks back, but figure it's worthy of posting since I still seem to be finding bits of paint in my hair.
I finally used some of the Benjamin Moore paint I purchased the weekend after I closed on my house. The color is Abalone, from Benjamin Moore's Color Preview collection. I first discovered it in one of House Beautiful's paint color articles (my favorite feature in this magazine). It was probably a bit reckless of me to buy two gallons of the rather spendy Aura paint without testing, but I felt confident about the decision after finding photos of it in action like this living room linked here.
Here are a couple of before shots. The first shows the scary attic hatch, which I painted with the same Hirshfield's ceiling white I used throughout the hall. Let's not use our imagination as to the source of some of those icky stains on the wall. The second is a view down my teeny, door-filled hall. It takes a left turn where you find a dark little nook with doors leading to the bathroom and a bedroom.
Abalone is an amazing light grey. When I put the first coat on, I saw a hint of pink and a luminosity that is very much like the shell of its namesake. Some people consider grey a cold color, but I feel this one is very different. It's going to be a great color for my living room, which connects directly to this little hall.
The paint formulation I used was Benjamin Moore Aura Matte. Some people have a fair amount of angst about this paint, but I found that l liked it a lot. I followed the direction I got from the fine folks at the paint shop and also took a quick look at this video that describes the best way to work with the paint.
The process I followed was to cut in and let all areas dry for at least an hour. Then I went through and worked with the roller. I'm not very good at doing the cutting in because I'm a bit too precious with the paint so a lot of work went into coat #2. I was also dealing with painting around five doorways in very tight quarters. Not much fun. Some people consider Aura a one coat paint. I disagree, but maybe that's because my uneven plaster walls make it pretty easy to miss a spot or two.
This isn't really an after shot, but it will have to do. It shows the contrast between the paint left by the previous owner and the Abalone. As you can see, the hall and living room morph together. I had better get cracking on painting the living room because I don't want to get too comfortable living with this chaos!
My disclosure statement covers all of my posts, but just to be clear, all products mentioned in this project were purchased by me.
This isn't a DESIGN blog. It's a chronicle of my adventures in fixing up and decorating my first home -- a circa 1953 rambler.
