Spray.Paint.Magic

I bought a great syroco mirror off Ebay a while ago for $25.

Well, I finally got around to painting it this weekend. I wanted to take it from retro gold to crisp and clean white. I bought some white spray paint in flat and gloss, 'cause I didn't know which one to go with.

I decided to test each paint on opposite sides of the frame to see which one I liked better, but covered the mirror with some old wrapping paper so I wouldn't goop it up. The gloss won out and I spray painted away.

It's going in our master bedroom as part of a little "sprucing up" project I'm doing in there. More on that later.

Paint Debate

There has been much debate during the last couple weeks over what new and exciting color we'll paint the living room/dining room area. If you remember, I had been thinking that our current color was reading a little too pink and maybe we should move into some "gray" territory (um, that is, I thought we should find a nice soft gray to paint the walls.)

Robert was open to the idea but he wasn't really digging the tester colors once they were up on the wall. See, Robert is more of a warm color kind of guy and the cool, gray shades I was loving just weren't agreeing with him.

So after some, eh, spirited conversations, we decided that we would go back to Ace (they got the Benjamin Moore) and pick out some colors we both could agree on. Still wanting to stay somewhere the "grayish" area, we looked for grays that had a bit of a warmer tone to them. Actually, we both liked the first color that Robert picked out. It's Benjamin Moore's edgecomb gray (it's actually the second color from the top in the pic above).

So were pretty sure this will be the magic color. I'm also wanting to paint the backs of our built-ins with a nice aqua or teal that will jive with the edgecomb.

I'm leaning toward the middle two colors--Benjamin Moore's poolside blue or cool aqua. Either way, I think we're going to be having a painting party next weekend.

*Picture above from Decor Pad.

Surfaces and Such

We knew we wanted a nice grey counter top for the kitchen, but we weren't certain which material we'd go with. We were really loving the idea of doing Corian—they have a couple of fabulous greys that are right up our alley.

We put Corian in our hall bathroom and have been pretty pleased with it. Plus, the grey Corian has the matte, concrete look we're going for.

Trouble is, the Corian we liked ended up being pretty pricey for the square footage we need. So we started looking around and considering different things. We thought about going with a simple, solid laminate (for sure the most affordable choice) and then replacing it in a few years with something fancier.

Then while scouring the counter samples at Lowe's, we came across a grey quartz that we were kind of digging.

Comparing it against the Corian (that we really like) and the laminate (that we would kind of just be settling for) it came out somewhere around the middle price-wise—about $500 more than the laminate but $1000 less than the Corian.

So right now it's coming out as the winner of the counter top wars. Although the laminate would be a bit cheaper, we kind of just want to put this sucker in and be done with it—and not have to spend more money down the road. We also dug up a 10% off coupon for Lowe's that will certainly be going toward our little grey counters...

Odds and Ends

We picked out our cabinets and appliances for the kitchen a while ago, but we recently made some decisions about the "accoutrement" of the room.

Robert decided that this faucet was the faucet for us (it's Kohler's Simplice Pull-Down faucet) and I agreed. We picked it up from the Depot the other day:

It took us a little while longer to find the pendants we wanted (we're going to put two above the bar). After being disappointed with the selection at local lighting stores, I turned my search to the internet. Here were some of the styles I was digging:

I was particularly loving the one on the far right, but it was a little too rich for my taste at $119 a pop. So I found a similar style at a more reasonable $77 on Amazon:

 

I'm a little nervous that I ordered them without seeing them all lit up in person, but I guess that's what returns are for.

Unfortunately, these fun finishing touches won't be in place for a while. I called the company that handles Ikea kitchen installations today (since we're pretty much ready for cabinets at this point) and the next opening they had was...August 3rd. So that's, eh, almost a month from now. So that's another month where not much will be going on in the kitchen. We'll probably use these upcoming weeks to paint, clean, and generally get more organized since all the dirty/dusty stuff is over and done with. It will be fantastic to take the plastic off our living room furniture!

Looking Like a Room

We finally have insulation and drywall up in the kitchen, so it's actually starting to resemble a room!

The can lighting is also up (although it's not functional yet) and the fan for the range and air conditioning vent have been moved to their new, permanent places.

Plaster should be going up this week and then (fingers crossed) we'll be ready for cabinets.

Fire Pit Happenings

Right before the rehearsal dinner for our wedding (which we had in our backyard), we made a fire pit by stacking stone pavers on top of each other. It was a functional little pit and definitely served us well, but it wasn't the prettiest pit in the neighborhood.

So over the past few weeks, we've been working on making it a little more appealing to the eye and adding more outdoor seating to the area. It finally looked like this when we were done:

We used pressure-treated cedar planks to frame out where we wanted the seating area and then removed dirt from around the pit until it was about three inches deep (so when you step off from the grass, you're stepping down, not up). Then we filled out the area around the pit with pea pebbles for color and texture. A few plastic adirondack chairs from Home Depot added some much needed outdoor seating.

And to keep the cedar plank frame in tact, we fastened the corners together with small brackets (it's the same method Robert used for the frame of his veggie garden).

We're lovin' this new little area already...