When we bought our first house, and I realized I could paint the walls whatever I wanted, I went wall by wall and painted whatever I wanted. So one room had a wall that was basically white on the two busy (window, closet) walls, and one wall was like book leather (deep red, sponged with several related colors and a mica-doped sparkly eggshell faux finish glaze) and another wall was done reminiscent of ikat fabric in purples and blues and greens and so fucking what I loved it. In another room I used painters tape to mask the wall in patterns, painted over it with sponging and whatnot and then took the tape off, the end result was a wall filled with white patterns and I loved it.
Then we moved into our forever home.Â
I did not ask ANYONE what I should do with it, though I did run it by hubby because he lives here, too, and I basically had free reign.
The front room of the house, an erstwhile parlor, is sunset colors over plaster I applied heavily with my fingers, in swirls. matte colors start at the ceiling with a lavender, then shade down to darker purples, pinks and then through salmon colors, and the trim is all salmon and gold highlights. When a lamp is on, itâs the warmest, most inviting space. Itâs the first thing I see when I come downstairs. Thatâs not a bad thing.
Hereâs when it was new:
I wanted the dining room to be sparkly. So we did glitter on the top half of the room.Â
Also a goddamn chandelier, courtesy of Ikea.
Unfortunately we gave up on the halogen crystal sparkle bulb and put in a brighter but less glam LED, so itâs a little less disco ball, but what can you do?
This room is the hardest to photograph. Itâs a pale periwinkle on top with âangelâ holographic fine glitter in the surface glaze, which, while not slick, is very scrubabble. The wainscotting is a high gloss âadmiralâ blue, and the trim is the same, but sponged with many colors of doped glitter glaze (this I did from scratch) for an iridescent effect in peacock feather colors.Â
The living room took months, a solid month of pure work and then some. We took it from white with stenciled ivy and shag carpet to this:
I knew, even in 2007, when I was capable of working 14 hours per day on this house, that there would be times when I would be sick on a couch for weeks on end, and the idea of staring at orange peel white walls with stenciled ivy borders made my skin crawl. So I scalloped a coat of plaster over the orange peel in large finely fanned arcs of texture, primed it, sketched the outlines, filled in the big blocks of color, and now we have a stained glass jungle in our living room. The colors are not accurate in a digital medium. It is far more intense in person. (Dark blues and greens often do not photograph accurately.)
Hubby was inspired, so he did an autumn forest in his study.
And then he covered literally every available wall with bookshelves.Â
I donât know if I have a picture of my computer room, but it was inspired by salmon tipped yellow roses, with a vivid yellow background with orange and pink faux finish. I did about five minutes of it and then got very sick and hubby finished it but without a clear understanding of what I was going for. Itâs not what I intended but every time I look at it I know how much he loves me, so itâs been this way for a long time. The trim is hot pink, on purpose. When the lights are on itâs a very vivid, happy color. Itâs the darkest corner of the house, so it needs it.Â
