Progress in Living and Dining Rooms!

We are very fortunate that the former owner of our home had installed floor to floor carpeting over all the hardwood floors on the ground floor.  We have oak in our living and dining rooms and pine floors in our downstairs bedrooms and kitchen and  - SCORE!

We pulled up the carpeting this weekend and the floors are in pretty good shape underneath.  Thanks to our friend Justin for bringing his fancy, red pick-up over to haul away the carpets.



We also finished both the dining room and the living room in American Clay.
http://americanclay.wix.com/new/homeownersdiyers#!__homeownersdiyers-learn

It is a beautiful alternative to paint, you put it on with a trowel like plaster and then you let it dry and compress it by adding water again.  The finished look is very textured and gives these rooms a cozy southwestern type atmosphere (thank you Rick).  We chose Mauna Loa Red for the dining room and Tucson Gold for the living room and we are really happy with the choices.

Getting ready for kitchen cabinets

Clearly this is a very self indulgent blog- I really just want to remember my thought process in picking the colors for our kitchen.


The first thing I ever painted in this new house was the pantry - I picked a color called Homestead Green by Benjamin Moore - basically because it matched the original color of the pantry VERY closely.  This was after hours and hours of stripping the wallpaper.  So many suggestions here - vinegar, Downy softener.....pick and peel and do it again wow did they have some strong glue.

I am not really a green person but this is in the blue/green family and very pretty.  The pantry is in the back of this shot.  The next nook is the kitchen "office".  For this small area we picked "Hemlock" which is a dark blue.  Really pretty color!

 I was not considering bringing the Homestead Green color into the kitchen but after a failed attempt at introducing Citroen - it just became easier to choose a known color.  We are putting the stove against the wall that has the chimney box from the other side.  We had hoped to expose the brick - too buried - so my husband had a great idea of painting it brick red - I love it.