Going Green

So, I decided last night to go to Wal-Mart with my friend and pick up some groceries and more importantly to me, paint and supplies. My grandmother has decided to let me have my great-grandmother's 75+ year old large dining table that seats 8-10, and I didn't feel like my antique white walls with stark white trim would cut it to frame out such an important heirloom. Thanksgiving and Christmas at Grandmother Fleming's house was a big deal, we would all gather around the tables (yes there was a lot of us) and feast happily on turkey with all the trimmings, reliving Thanksgivings/Christmases of the past. Gifts were not really thought about, simply as much pie as you could stuff in your face and afterwards playing with the cousins.

After my parents got a nasty divorce, my grandpa and then great-grandmother passed on and it was only a few more years before the big gatherings began to fall apart. My dad and his brother are twins-I'll skip the family drama-but our two families became divided and began to drift further and further apart. As of 2011, I began hosting (hostessing?) Thanksgiving for my dad's side of the family and Christmas Eve dinner for my dad, stepmom, brother, and grandmother. I attempted to do Christmas dinner for my mom's side of the family, but it became quickly apparent that those holidays were way too close together for me to efficiently recover from one to host the next. Not sure how my Grandmother Fleming did it. *smile*

So, this brings me to my point. I've been hosting Thanksgiving dinner at my house with borrowed lawn chairs and yard sale tables for the last few years. Not that anyone minded, I'm sure, but when family or friends come over you want them to be comfortable. I finally mustered up the courage to ask my grandmother for the table and chairs set. She took about a week to answer me, and said yes. This is a big deal because my grandmother rarely lets go of anything of historical family value. I can't say as I blame her, but I'm 30 now with a little family of my own, and this means a great deal to me to be able to serve guests on a table that was so cherished in my memories of my Grandmother Fleming's house.

I rifled through the color swatches at the display and found some greens. I was going for an olive green but didn't want anything too "Army-ish" if you know what I mean. No? Well thinking about it now, that was a dumb thing to think because Army garb is called olive drab. Duh. Anyway, I wound up picking a color called "Wellington Khaki" from one of the swatches on the wall, which was actually one color choice up from the color I wanted the walls to be. Wise decision on my part thanks to my friend, because once I finished painting, the room was the exact color I thought it would be as the darker color below it on the swatch.

Being roly poly right now and easily tired, it took me from 10:30am to after 6pm of painting, cutting in, and repainting (had to have 2 coats to go from antique white to dark green) to get the room where I needed it to be. And I LOVE it. It looks especially good with the mirror project I completed a few weeks ago. I was always afraid of dark colors, but this just looks fantastic. I am exhausted, my ankles are swelling, and I almost fell off the A-frame ladder 3 times trying to cut in the 9ft vaulted ceiling, but I couldn't be happier.

Here are the before pictures:

You can see how sterile it looks. Literally this is the contractor grade crapola paint we had my dad come in and spray 5 gallon buckets of just so we could have some paint on the walls to cover the repaired drywall. There are no dimensions or really any division of the lines in the room, everything kind of meshes together.

Now here is a during picture:

At this point, I'm terrified. The walls are drying half dark half light, I haven't cut anything in yet, and I'm afraid it's just going to be way too dark. And no, I don't use painters tape. Waste of time because after all the time it takes to apply it, I can never get it to adhere correctly or give me sharp lines, it always winds up making me feel a false sense of security and I get globs of paint underneath it. Even with the good blue 3M stuff. Excuse my husband's utility trailer framed in the front yard, he was doing some yardwork and moving things around.

Now, drumroll please. Here are the after pictures:

The paint in the last picture by my daughter's head was still just shy of dry, hence the light marks. But hey, I think it looks fantastic! I'm very ready to move my Grandmother's table into the room once my dad delivers it and have some friends over for at least a card game to show off my new room!

I also decided that the photo 'collage' in the first before picture was worth attempting to save the wall stickers and re-apply them with the same setup on the pictures. I didn't do it perfectly, but until I go in there with a level for the stickers and adjust the picture frames perfectly this is what I came up with:

That is my beautiful daughter at about a year and a half old. Now, this was actually a decorative plate holder for the wall that my aunt gave me. I decided I wanted to repurpose it as a picture holder instead and already had these frames from our wedding a few years before. I think they are cuter with her little pictures in them anyway. :)

On to the mirror project, quickly. My husband's line of work causes him to happen across many items left stranded by people in a hurry. I try not to let these unfortunate circumstances deter me from seeing the good in refinishing and utilizing these items instead of hauling them to the dump. For instance: husband brought home this mirror one day. I thought it was fabulous because it was huge and would make a fantastic dining room mirror. However, I was less than pleased with the finish on the plastic goldtone frame. Krylon to the rescue! (I actually think it was Valspar, but either way.) It took me a while to decide what I was going to do with it, if I wanted to do a black frame or plain white, who knew. Then one day while pinteresting, it hit me.

Here's the before pictures, after I took the actual glass mirror out of it of course:

Now, I decided to paint a 'base coat' of gray. Husband had gray primer in the shed already so that was a bonus I didn't have to buy, plus it would be primer-ed as well! I wanted to get the feel of aged and weather-beaten wood.

For the top coat, I went with Hobby Lobby's Valspar crackle top coat. It's an off white color, but once it crackled, you could see parts of the gray 'weathered wood' underneath. It really made the frame look like someone painted an old carved wood frame and had it for 100 years. Perfection.

This last picture is one of the mirror against the new green paint in the dining room. You can see in the mirror I was only half done with the room, but couldn't wait to see how the colors went together. Magnificent! I was super pleased.

I sure can't wait to get this heavy thing hung on the wall! My daughter seen the green in the room and says "Mommy, I lub it!" I asked her what color it was. "Gween!" What does green mean baby? "Gween mean GO!" How right you are. And both of these projects were a definite GO. :)

As far as being a foodie, well, lately I haven't been slacking per se as much as I have been just being a lazy vegan. You know. Whole wheat tortillas, stuff some junk in them. Leftovers. Left my seitan loaf in the microwave overnight so I was pretty upset I had to throw it out. :( *sigh* Anyway, that's been about it. Was extremely exhausted as I mentioned before from all this painting today, so dinner tonight was a frozen pizza for the husband and kid, and bean and cheese burritos for myself. Yeah. It was that kind of night.

Well, that's been the extent of my busy day. Sleep well my friends and happy eating!