The Domino Effect

You know how sometimes you start a project and then realize that before you can finish it, you’d have to do “just this one thing”, so you do that. But in the midst of doing that, you think “well, I’m already working on this, so I might as well also do that too”. And then one thing leads to another and you find yourself in a full fledged room makeover when all you wanted to do in the first place was BUILD A STUPID DESK.

The detectives in the room are frantically making deductions… YES, this happened to us. We started out wanting to change our Spare Room closet from a closet to an office and that included adding a custom built desk to the mix. Well, the desk is in (hooray! you can see part 1 of the process here and part 2 here), but somewhere along the way, I decided it would be a great idea to paint THE ENTIRE ROOM. Don’t judge me- things just got away from me and now the room is a different color altogether. And I love it. 🙂

We knew that at some point, things would need to be repainted with the arrival of the desk because the closet hadn’t seen the light of day in years and was a total different color than the rest of the room. As we got closer to installing the desk, I began to realize that if I wanted the closet painted, it would be smart to do so before putting the desk in. And if the closet space would be painted, the whole room would have to be painted being that they are ONE now… which meant that it was time to start thinking about color in the Spare. You can see the dirty closet walls before they were painted and the difference in color (lower left corner) from where the doors sectioned off the room from the closet in this shot…

For those of you who are die hard teal-in-the-Spare-Room fans, I’m sorry… this post might break your heart a little bit. The room is no longer blue. As much as we loved the light mint and dark teal, I was feeling like it was time to try something different. I say “I” because, frankly, Mitch couldn’t care less. 🙂 He thought I was crazy, but fortunately for me, Mitch has a pretty high tolerance for crazy so it was all systems go.

I wanted something very different. Something that is super challenging for me. Something neutral. Something…

I know, this is uncharted territory. But I’ve been ogling over other people’s white rooms with fun accents for awhile now and wanted to challenge myself a little. Start with a neutral foundation and let my love of color and spunk come through in accessories.

This was kind of split second decision- I knew we were nearing time to get that desk in… I had narrowed it down to which shade of white I wanted (there are SO MANY)… all I had to do was buy the paint and do it. I made most of those decisions the day of. Ran out to Home Depot, began painting at 2pm and finished around 7pm or so. Here’s what it looked like before…

I know, I know… stop blabbering and just show the finished product. Well, finished as of now… we now get to start the adventure of decorating this completely new space. But here she blows as is…

It’s definitely different. Brighter, lighter, airier, needs some personality, but makes the space feel a little less enclosed. What I do like is that it feels like a blank slate. Like I can start from scratch and do a little exploring in the way of different types of decorating. Let me just say… that pink side table might be the first to go!

It’s got the slightest tint of gray, which was also something I was going for, but the color itself is called “White” (ironic, no?) by Behr. Here’s one final shot at the project that started this whole mess! 🙂

Now I’m really tempted to try my hand at white washing those brown brown shades and switching in a neutral curtain to cover those shoe shelves.

So what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Is your curiosity peaked and you’re wondering where we go from here? Join the club- I’m a newbie at decorating white rooms!