Tuesday, October 12, 2010

In Living Color: A Home Tour, Kind Of

When we first moved out to the country in Feb. of 2007 our house was about 3.5 years old. It was in desperate need of cleaning due to the previous owners' rottweilers and I was just so thrilled to be moving into our first house. It never really occurred to me to paint before we moved in.

So after thinking about it and saying I was going to do it, I finally did it! It's not perfect, but it brings much needed warmth and personality to our living space, not to mention it has covered all the marks on the walls. I learned a lot in the process, about picking colors and about the actual technique. I did not paint our bedroom, the (current) guest room, the office, or our large school/play area, which has to be over 500 sq. feet. I do anticipate painting our master bedroom once I find a new duvet cover for our bed.
So without further ado, welcome to our home. We live in the country, within 5 miles of our town and about 50 miles from the big city (Mpls./St. Paul). We have 10 acres and live on a dirt road. North of our property is 20 acres of state land and to the east is another 40. We do have neighbors situated to the west of us, but we all have 10 acres each. Having grown-up in the suburbs of the twin cities, this is very country for me. For Paul, who grew up on a dairy farm in the bluffs of SW'ern WI, it's still not rural enough. He still desires to move to the middle of nowhere.
Our entryway (looking down from the main floor) is quite small for a growing family of 5. If you're looking for a home to buy, I recommend a large entryway or at least one without stairs. Going up is our main level and going down is the walkout basement. I wanted a darker brown for the entryway because of dirty boys (big and little) coming in. Due to the lighting in this area, the color I used, tends to look a little a bit orange-y at times. Other than that, it serves its purpose well.

At the top of the stairs is the dining room with the kitchen off to the right. This is an odd arrangement in my mind. The dining room is carpeted too, which also seems odd. These are not things I really thought much of when we first saw the house though.


This is the view of the dining room from the kitchen. The hallway leads to the 3 upstairs bedrooms and the bathroom.

The kitchen is my favorite room in the house. Our apt. prior to moving had a little galley style kitchen, emphasis on little. Moving into our house was like moving into a mansion in some respects. I love the corner sink and windows, which looks out onto our property and the state land ~ very picturesque. Because of the vaulted ceilings and walls connecting one room to another, I had to decide to either paint everything one color throughout or split up the colors on some of the walls. I opted for the latter.

Here is the living room. My camera does not do justice to the colors. The red is brighter than this picture shows.



To the left of this picture is where the kitchen is, though it is a separate room. Down the hallway from the dining room are the bedrooms. The first bedroom is the boys' room. I love how this color turned out. It looks baby blue in the picture, but it actually has a grayer undertone.


Across the hall is the main bath. It is just a mild tan color. I figure that way, I can change the theme easier in it if I ever desire to do so.
This is our master bath. I actually got this color from mixing two colors. I had picked out a color called "rice wine" for the hallway, which was a pale yellow color. Unfortunately though, it looked like puke green in our dark hallway so I had to repaint it a tan color. But I used the rice wine color and mixed it with the color I used in the downstairs bathroom and got this minty green color.

Note to those home shopping: the whirlpool tub seems great at first, but the jets are hard to keep clean inside, especially if the home has been preowned. They are not comfortable either. If we were to build our own place, we'd either skip a bath or just do a deep bath tub. We hardly ever use this. (There is a standing shower behind the door.)


And lastly, this is our downstairs bathroom. Not much to say here. Obviously, there is much of the house I didn't include because it didn't get painted (or photographed in a clean state). This home tour was mostly about the color thing. In doing this I realized that photographing rooms is very difficult and I'm not good at it.

Thanks for visiting!

8 comments:

The Three 22nds said...

I love the colors! It is amazing how much warmth and life a little color adds!

Navigating the Mothership said...

Fun! You know I love house tours. The paint colors are really nice and you have a beautiful home. The location & all your acres sounds nice, too.

Heidi said...

Totally agree on the jet tub! We had one in our house before the fire and when we replaced it, we just put in an extra deep tub w/o jets.

Love the colors!

Tonya said...

I enjoyed this tour of your home! Thanks for sharing with us. Bet you're glad that painting is DONE!

Sherri said...

Loved the tour of your home, and all the colors. I haven't checked blogs in a while, and was especially touched by your last two posts about Felicity and the memories you have from her birth. I will never miss the intense sadness immediately after we lost Amelia, but I will miss the freshness of my memories of her. The familiarity of being pregnant with her. You have a beautiful family, and your comments on my blog are greatly appreciated.
Love, Sherri

Ebe said...

Ooooh, how pretty! Thanks for sharing, but now I'm suffering with some jealousy over all your space!!

Debbie said...

Gorgeous job!! I especially love the living room. Great colors.

Love your tall ceilings and space.

Haddock said...

Like the layout of the kitchen.