Before and After

It's no secret that I didn't exactly love the color scheme the former owners of our house chose for the living spaces.  Not that I don't like bright colors (the kitchen in our Salem house is red...and I chose the color) but the colors made our small house feel really dark and small, and made the house really gloomy in the wintertime.  We'd planned to paint the house before I got pregnant with Olivia and then, suddenly, the focus was putting the nursery together.  Before I knew it, she was born, and I figured we wouldn't tackle this project until she went to college, if ever.  

By some miracle, we finally decided to paint about a month ago.  And yes, it has taken a month to get us from before to after (most of the time one of us had to hang out with her while the other painted, so even though we had two people on the job, it took twice the time).  

Here's a reminder of what it looked like before: RED!! Living room. 

With a PURPLE!! accent wall (to match the kitchen).

PURPLE!! Kitchen.

Also, I forgot to take before pics of the hallway and entry.  This is from when we did our home inspection...so...not our stuff on the walls, but the color was the same.

We correctly guessed we'd need to prime the kitchen and the living room.

And just the primer alone made such a great difference.  I think if the coverage had been better, we might have just kept it white.  As it was, we had a super cool faux finish for when Lauren came to visit (and this is how you know your true friends...you let them see your house mid-home improvement projects).

Note the dish towel IN the dishwasher.  It had just broken when this picture was taken - the whole top ripped off because the plastic handle broke from use over time, and we had to put the towel in there so we wouldn't rip the front off the dishwasher every time we opened it (somehow it magically still worked).  I hated it anyway...love our new dishwasher now!!

So once we had everything white, we had to pick colors.  It was something we'd been thinking about for two years since we moved into the house, so I had no idea how we'd actually make a decision. Thankfully, having a baby in tow at the paint store helps you make quick choices - she was not about to tolerate us pondering paint chips for hours on end.  We decided on a soft green for the accent wall and the kitchen and a light gray for everything else.   

Here's the after pictures! We love how it turned out...so light and bright, but not totally boring either. I also finally hung up all of my plates I've been collecting from various places.  Doesn't the house look awesome now??

I think the bouncy seat in the middle of the living room is a nice feature, too.

Kitchen - complete with new dishwasher... (now covered with dinosaur magnets)

Entry and living room with dog and new accent pillows.

The hall color looks really green in these pictures...definitely more gray in person.

We also took the ugly, non-functioning track lighting out of the hallway - that was a project Andy and my Dad took on right after Olivia was born.  Big improvement there, too!

So that's what we've been up to the past month (aside from raising our tiny human).  I also realized that minus two bedrooms and two bathrooms, we've painted every single wall in this house.  I think the master bedroom and bathroom are next - we like the colors, but they need to be freshened up.  I think, though, that we need a few months to forget what a pain in the butt painting is before we tackle those projects!