A DIY success: paint!

After the trial that was my last DIY attempt I was a little weary of jumping into another one. But this time I had Cooper to help me and also it's something I've done successfully in the past: paint some walls. Cooper and I had talked about painting accent walls when we moved into our apartment in June but I was studying for the bar and he works full time so it never happened. But now that I've got much more time on my hands the project sounded much more appealing. So we picked out some paint colors at one of my many trips to Home Depot in the last few weeks and waited for the Labor Day paint sale that the friendly paint person told us was coming. 

The bedroom

We started in the bedroom. 

It's hard to get a picture of the full wall because of the shape of the room but this will give you a good idea of what it looked like. The walls are all a yellow off white. We picked a blue color, not too surprising actually, both my rooms in Hawaii had blue walls (one also had green but that's beside the point). 

Cooper started prepping the room while I finished breakfast.

We had one roller and one corner brush so cooper started with the edges and I started with the roller. 

I was a little worried about the color since we didn't do a test strip but I think it turned out just lovely. We did two coats of paint and with both of us working it went quickly.

The kittens liked having all our stuff moved around. 

I really liked how it looks. 

My phone camera isn't doing a great job of capturing the color which is a tad warmer than it looks in the picture but oh well. I still love it.

Round 2: the living room

We prepped this area while the first coat of paint was drying upstairs, which went much more quickly after having done one room.

We had to lock the kitties in the spare bedroom while we painted downstairs. Which I think they sort of liked since I usually keep them out of there while I'm not in there. For good reason, as while we were painting we heard a crash and discovered this:

And this

Waldorf trying to look innocent above the place the bin belongs.

But better a little mess than kittens in wet paint. 

I was more worried about not having tested this color than the bedroom color. It's a rather light green. And we have really warm lighting in the room already. 

It looks light in this picture because we've got the lights on.

But as we put on the second coat and it dried it got a little darker. 

This is just the natural light.

And in the natural light it looks much cooler. I think I like how it came out though. 

It seems bright but this side of the room is the darkest and we didn't want to make it feel darker with a dark color. It's also the largest room in the apartment since it's open to the dining area (behind me in this picture). So it's a bold color but I think since it has so much space to fill (and it's only on one wall) it works out. And if I hate it later I'll just get a new color. 

All this painting has made me consider painting our spare bedroom too, we have a lot of blue and green paint left and it really didn't take that long with the two of use. But I don't feel like moving any more furniture today, so that may be a project for a few months from now. If ever.

So one more time the before and afters and then that's a wrap.