The dining room

I don't know if this happens to you, but as soon as I think I am nearing the end of a project, I seem to find myself at the beginning again. Here I am referring to the overarching project of our home, and how just as we are nearing the end of major projects, I wind up revisiting older ones.

When I first moved in to this house, Tomu hadn't touched it. All the walls were flat white, and it was screaming for color. One long weekend we painted the living and dining rooms. We chose this orange for the living room because it would coordinate with the painting you can see here:

His friend painted it in high school. Recently, the girls have been patting the blue figures rear and saying "Daddy's butt!" while laughing hysterically. I was thinking it was time for the painting to be phased out, and there was some new artwork I wanted to hang that we inherited from my grandma.

This meant that the orange was going to have to go.

 And I actually really love the orange, so it was a tough decision.

We chose a color called "April Mist" by Behr, which I interpreted as being a bluish green. First I primed, overnight. Here is the last bit of orange!

In the morning I had two little helpers that joined me to add the color:

The color wound up very nice, though a little more on the blue side than I hoped.

It lightened the room considerably. And it actually flows quite nicely with the living room, which has aqua accents in the curtains. Here are my grandma's rodeo watercolors that I have always loved hanging in their new home.

I hung up four of my bugs, and added some new artwork below them. The three center frames open from the front so you can change out the artwork regularly. The center one I will use for seasonal prints, and on either side each twin has their own frame to display whatever they've been working on.

Rosie's owl:

Amaya's abstract art:

I really like it and the room seems much bigger now, somehow. Several visitors have not noticed the color change even though it is so striking - but they all say that it makes so much sense with the rest of the house that it seems like it has always been this way. I guess that means I made a good choice!

I do sometimes miss the orange, but not the painting of "Daddy's butt" :)