Two-Toned Painted Rooms

Color-blocked walls keep popping up in my feeds and in magazines. Have you been noticing them, too? I love how the look can add a lot of color to a room without being overbearing, and instantly makes a space feel modern.

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It's an especially great look for a kids room! This nursery would look so different if it were painted in only the bold color from floor to ceiling. It would be way too intense.

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I love how subtle and sweet the colors are in this one below.  Wouldn't something like this be fun in Margot's nursery? The art hanging right on the line is such a great touch!

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Jordan Ferney's beautiful living room is another great example of two-toned subtlety! She nailed the colors in here with that crisp white and the palest of blush on the ceiling.

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And check out this high contrast version. White and deep navy! I love the idea of painting right through the moulding and the doors. Also, it doesn't hurt that the hardware and lighting are so perfectly unique and modern!

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Continuing the paint line right through the door reminds me of this project featured on One Kings Lane. Such a fun idea for a closet or en suite bathroom door - and it's so easy to change if you ever get tired of the look! I think the key to pulling this off is painting the main walls in the room a bright, clean white and keep the furniture colors and patterns pretty tame as well.

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If you're trying to get a similar look with the walls or doors at your house, don't forget my very best painting trick for getting the most crisp lines possible. It's a game-changer!

Why Don't You...Ceruse - a follow up!

Happy Thanksgiving! What do you have going on this week? We're up at my parents house for the next couple of days, but when we get back I have some big, productive plans! Black Friday is less about shopping for me and more about project time! It's so nice to have a chunk of uninterrupted time at home, when the emails aren't coming fast and furious and the pace feels a little slower. I did this cerusing project for Domino over a holiday weekend and it's still one of my favorite pieces in the house!

(photos by my friend, Sarah Webb - who has the CUTEST loungewear line here!)

I love to really research a project as much as possible before tackling it. Before I started the cerusing on the secretary piece, I looked around for limed furniture inspiration and it was actually sort of hard to find! There isn't much about cerusing out there - and even fewer images with tagged info on the cerusing. After some digging, here are my most favorite cerused images and links from around the web...

Alice Lane Home

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Lonny

KWID

Stunning, right? It's such a graphic yet organic look! If you want to try cerusing yourself, remember that the piece has to be solid oak, and the more pronounced the grain, the better! It's super easy to find affordable oak pieces at thrift stores and on Craigslist. I just did a quick search on the Phoenix CL and found a dozen great options!

The full tutorial for cerusing is on the original post, but here's a list of the materials you'll need:

Gel stripper  //  brass bristled brush  //  aniline dye stain  //  liming wax 

Happy cerusing, friends! Please email me photos if you give it a try yourself! I'd love to see. AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! xo

Xerographica, My New BFF

I don't have the greenest thumb, so I try to stick with house plants that are very forgiving. I've discovered the easiest plant to care for of all is a Xerographica, or an air plant. They need only a little water once or twice a month and THEY DON'T NEED TO BE PLANTED! You can pick them up out of their container and move them to another spot or vessel without any mess. They're basically the perfect plant for styling, especially with their soft sagey curly stems! So pretty! I bought a couple for my mom's house and we put one in her kitchen and another in her guest bath. 

I like the ease of putting air plants in pretty little containers best, but there are some really cool ideas out there for displaying air plants in unique ways.

1 - Emily Moore's acrylic and cording display  //  2 - Installing metal satellite shaped holders to mount air plants on a wall  //  3 - Air plant sea urchins  //  4 - Display in neon planters  //  5 - A brass hanging planter  //  6 - Follow this DIY for a macrame hanging planter, and use an air plant instead  //  7 - Rustic, geometric air plant holder (could be a fun DIY!)

There are so many things to love about these plants - gorgeous, easy to care for, last forever, etc - but the icing on the cake is they are super cheap if you buy them at the right places! The teeny tiny ones cost almost nothing:

They grow fast, so don't worry too much about paying for the bigger-sized plants at West Elm (which usually run $20-25 each), just grab a few of these inexpensive ones and bunch them together as they grow.

1 - 5 for $13  //  2 - Starter kit for $32  //  3 - 5 for $9  //  

4 - 1 pretty pink for $6  //  5 - 10 for $16  //  6 - Variety 12 for $20

Have you ventured into the world of air plants yet? I'd love to see how you're using them!

Brass Plating

Some of you sharp-eyed readers noticed I changed out the hardware on our PAX wardrobes.

I used these 15" Varnhem pulls from IKEA. I loved the long, thin lines and the great price, so I snatched up six and sprayed them gold!

Another (albeit more expensive) route would have been to get these pulls plated in brass. I have used a local company called Papago Plating before with good results!

I had them strip the lacquer off my kitchen faucet so that the finish would be "living" and have a more natural, subtle patina.

I also used them to plate the hardware I bought for my clawfoot tub.

It's a great option for when you're trying to make plumbing from different lines look cohesive together. We're doing this with a client's bathroom fixtures now, trying to match the really bright satin brass finish of their new faucets on the drain pieces of their free-standing tub.

A few tips for a successful plating experience - Always ask for samples of the finishes! Also, it's a really good idea to only bring the parts of the faucet that need to be plated with you to the plating company. And be sure to photograph all the parts you are dropping off! You don't want to lose any of the pieces! :)

Overdyed Quilts

How gorgeous is this overdyed quilt from Spartan?  As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to copy the idea.

I've been holding on to a small child's quilt for a while now that has some staining on it, but the overall pattern and the individual fabric patterns are so sweet!

I thought about cutting it up to make pillows or to frame, but how sweet would it be to overdye this quilt for Margot's nursery? I love the idea of getting to save the quilt and I think hot pink would be SO cute! 

I Have This Thing With Floors (the Hex Tile Chapter)

My parents' big remodel is in the home stretch! There are three bathrooms that need tile and that's just about it. But three bathrooms worth of tile is a ton of tile! And we're at that point in the project where my parents are sort of sick of spending money so every dollar spent needs to really count. We used some of the quartzite from their kitchen for the countertops in the bathrooms, so that helped us with the budget, but that limited our tile options too. As we learned picking a backsplash tile, quartzite is gorgeous but is hard to pair up with tile!

Cement tiles are so cool and I would love to get to use them here, but they're not in the budget. I also really loved this teak wood tile, but again, it's on the pricey side. What IS in the budget though is $3.99/sq ft hex tiles. We found a ton at local discount tile stores all around the Valley. Floor and Decor has some really pretty grays and neutrals which would look great with the quartzite. We're just going to pop out and replace tiles of different colors in a repeating pattern on the mesh sheets. The gorgeous and talented Gwen from The Makerista did this in her bathroom and it turned out SO WELL. I think she actually had to place each tile by hand, which sounds really labor intensive, but look at the results! What a beautiful floor!

My parents live in a city called Snowflake, and we've talked about doing something like these snowflake patterns here, but we're still thinking about it. Is that too literal? Part of me sort of loves the idea.

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I've found a million different patterns on the #Ihavethisthingwithfloors instagram account and hashtag. I feel like this account was made just for me. I majorly have a thing for good floors (and I bet you do, too). Check these out:

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The girls upstairs bathroom is next on my list to tackle, so if all goes well with this tile project in my parents' house, I'd love to do something sweet and girly like one of these:

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So many possibilities!! This last one makes my heart get all fluttery.  :)

(all images from here unless otherwise noted).