bedroom blues : our first painted wall.

what?! another update already!

i know! it's pretty crazy of us..

we've been wanting to paint a blue accent wall in our bedroom for months now, especially since every single wall in the house (and just about every single surface) was painted white by the investors from whom we bought the house. above are the three swatches we tested out. we went with blue because of the curtains already in the room:

so we actually decided on that middle blue (liquid blue by behr) MONTHS and months ago. and this is what that end of the room has looked like since then. we told ourselves it was to be sure we like the color, but really, we just got lazy.

anyway, one weekend a month ago we finally decided to bite the bullet and bought a can of paint, frog tape, some foam brushes and a roller and went for it:

we bought a paint and primer in one, so no priming necessary, especially on the already white wall. we did do some sanding of rough spots (the aforementioned investors paid for a quick and dirty paint job, which left our walls almost textures, but textured in paint roller swathes...). we did the first coat one night, and another coat the next.

i'm so happy we did this. i think it would be way too much on all four walls, but on the one wall that is a backdrop for art and knick-knacks in the room, it's quite lovely and really makes things pop.

a pretty little wine rack for under $40!

we've needed a wine storage solution for the house for awhile now. below is what it

was

. a non-functioning 12 bottle wine fridge, a six bottle wine rack stacked on top of it, and a bunch of other bottles just sitting on the floor. not very pretty or organize, or consistent. i've done quite a bit of research on wine fridges, and all that's really told me is that they are often expensive (for the size i want) as well as finicky. no fridge has consistently good reviews - always about a quarter of the reviews say they don't work out of the box. i take all that with a grain of salt, but nothing has made me confident enough to put the money down for it.

a few weekends ago, we stumbled upon the Omar Bottle Shelf from IKEA (only $30! to hold 24 bottles!). the only thing i didn't like about it is that it's so CHROME. which, you know, works great for storage shelves in the basement, but not so much for the corner of the dining room! so we threw in a bottle of Rust-Oleum's Champagne Mist metallic spray paint from home depot and ended up with a pretty little wine rack that holds a decent number of wines

plus, i think it really cleans up the space nicely. we still don't have a good solution for the growlers, but at least we no longer have wine bottles stored three different ways in our dining room (not including the whites in the actual fridge, of course). and it's much easier to see look at all the bottles now too, which makes picking one less of a chore, which means we've been more likely to have some wine with dinner.

neighbors are coming : a little privacy please!

so, the house next door is in escrow! this is absolutely fantastic because when we first moved in, it had been foreclosed but the homeowners were still living there. and it was, to put it gently, a total dump. since then, it has been flipped by investors and put on the market.

anyway, the sliding door in the kitchen faces the house next door, and more specifically, directly into the two bedrooms (sorry for the dark photos, we did this little project at night!):

we hadn't put up curtains yet, because i always felt curtains would be weird here in the kitchen. plus, we really love how much nice sunlight we get in the kitchen, and didn't want to lose that. however, just with the real estate agent, new homebuyers and various inspectors stopping by the past few days, we knew we had to do something!

we wanted something that was a quick and temporary solution. we eventually want to put in a wood fence up against that chainlink (it's on the neighbors side, so we can't touch it) - probably with some tall plants for additional privacy - but don't have the time to do so before the neighbors would move in.

after a bit of thought, we decided to do the same thing we did to those bathroom windows when we first moved in. the artscape etched glass window film that we got from home depot last time was so easy to install, and has held up really well to the humidity and direct afternoon sunlight of the bathroom.

we bought the 36x72 roll, and it was perfect (we needed 66 inches total). we did a stretch across the middle, that lands just a bit above eye level. it took all of half an hour to measure, cut and install. and i think it looks great! and while it's a bit modern for our craftsman home, the whole kitchen is kind of modern and will eventually be redone with wood-framed french doors. a view from the outside:

we didn't block out the entire door because it is still nice to be able to see outside if necessary, plus sanford loves spending his afternoons looking out the door:

lookit that booty!

and who are we to deny him that pleasure?