House of Bennetts

We've posted about needing to update the paint. We've posted about various nightstand options. And now, we are finally on our way towards the inspiration picture for this space: houzz

So let's go back to that dark dark period called poo brown. Upon move-in the master bedroom looked like the rest of the house.

Creeper

Master Bedroom

After getting settled, we had painted the room Grey Horse by Benjamin Moore. The thing is that the room pulled REALLY green with this color and just darker. It felt drab and just... not put together at all. We had mismatched nightstands, too much going on behind the bed and I just didn't like the room at all. master bed

From my side of bed looking toward door--Standing next to closets

The first order of business was to get the dresser chalk painted from black to... well. We weren't sure. We knew the nightstands that LB scored from the Thrift Store for $40 were going to be white, and so we didn't want the space to be TOO stark with all white furniture. Also, boring. I had a sample pot of Duck Egg Blue which I knew would not be enough to redo this honking dresser.

So, I mixed half Duck Egg Blue with half Pure White and I am in love with the result. The knobs clearly also had to go. We debated between these two contenders from Home Depot below... and wouldn't ya know...

The crystal ones won.

Those nightstands I talked about? Oh yeah. Those looked like this when LB rescued them (like dogs, basically).

As mentioned, we chalk painted them white. But we also added some feet to them! We grabbed premade 3-inch wood block-ish feet from Home Depot to get these bad boys up off the ground.

Before I show you the whole room "after" pictures, you should know that I am now a Benjamin Moore Paint life-r. I will never stray again. Please forgive me Benjamin Moore. A few months back we took advantage of a buy 1 get 1 free gallon of Clark and Kensington paint at Ace Hardware. They also sold Ben Moore paint there, so we had the Clark and Kensington tinted to Wickham Grey. We love the color, but we legit used an ENTIRE gallon to cover up the green/Gray Horse that was in here previously. I have NEVER used a whole gallon of paint to paint one room. Ever. Regardless of the paint panic, we LOVE the new brighter color and our much more relaxing master bedroom space!

One last time... Before:

master bed

After!

See the nightstand feet in that picture above!?

I just noticed that the lamp shade is sort of crooked in this picture and I turned my shutter speed down way too much so it's darker than real life... sorry blogosphere. #bloggerfail.

Let's break it all on down:

Bedding: Bar III from Macy's= Wedding Gift!
Lamps: Pottery Barn= Wedding Gift from work peeps!
Nighstands: thrift store chalk painted white... original knobs for now, will do something fun once we figure out headboard situation
Dresser: thrift store find chalk painted Duck Egg Blue mixture
Paint: Benjamin Moore Wickham Gray
Curtains: Ikea. Need to be hemmed.....

Still left to do?

I REALLY want to have white blinds in this room. The previous owners installed the wood colored ones throughout the whole first floor. Since they are expensive to replace and not actually necessary elsewhere I am not going to demand they be replaced throughout the house... but in here... momma wants.
Headboard! No idea what we are going to do for this... it will be DIY, but solid fabric or pattern? White? Dark Grey? Pastels? I dunno man!
Art and dresser styling: we are thinking of blowing up one of our wedding photos into a LARGE canvas for over the dresser.
Possibly switching out the fan in here with the one from my office... it's a lighter and brighter.
A different rug possibly? I like this gray one, but it just depends on where we go with the headboard.

It ended up pulling a little more beach cottagey that originally intended, but I love it actually. We busted this whole thing out over Labor Day weekend and we're pretty proud of ourselves. Any house victories for y'all this weekend?

We have had these Pottery Barn shelves hanging around our various houses for a good 5 years. I was annoyed by how brown they were at me, but knew I needed to do something to get some of the stuff on my desk, off of my desk. Cue, shelves. I grabbed my Annie Sloan chalk paint and got to work. Since I haven't ever showed y'all HOW you actually chalk paint, I tried with this go-round. You first start with your shelf/wood object, paint and some good Annie Sloan-esk brushes. The smaller one is for the paint and the fat guy is for the wax.

I knew I was going to do one of the shelves in a Pure White and not fancify it further. With chalk paint, there is no "make sure you don't get streaks" nonsense. Just whack it on there in swirly whirly gig style and you'll know when you're good with it.

For the other shelf, I wanted to try out two things: the Duck Blue color and striping a shelf (like with stripes, not with striping wood... we all know how I hate that).

You can totally see the different color variations as the chalk paint dries-- more green, to a more blue. The darker spots in the pictures below are not dry.

I then taped the shelf off with blue painters tape and painted over the duck blue with Pure White-- voila, stripes. (*Hint, leave it overnight before you remove the painters tape. I was doing this project at an UNGODLY hour and by accident left it till the morning. Could not have been a better ~~happy accident~~ decision).

Once I pulled the tape off, I got busy with my clear soft wax. I just swirl my big waxing brush in the wax and go to town making sure all of the paint gets decent coverage. I then used a lint free rag to buff the wax off. That's it. They are sealed and ready to mingle. (so clever)

When it came time to hang them, I let LB take the lead. We busted out our laser level-- loud and annoying but the best thing to use to hang ANYTHING-- and he hit me with this brilliant life hack: take a sticky note and put it under the hole you are drilling. It catches all the dust and wall crap. #MINDBLOWN