Weekend Reading #142

A quick little update and my favourite reads from the week.

Happy Friday my friends! I hope you had a wonderful week! I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe it’s Friday again already! It was a busy week around here as I tackled a few things from this list of simple update ideas that I shared earlier this week. After so many months of feeling stuck and a little overwhelmed with all the things, I’ve suddenly found myself in this “get it done” frame of mind lately. I’ve ordered up some lighting for a few different spaces, some supplies for a few DIY projects I have planned and even some window coverings for the kitchen, living room and Carson’s current bedroom. While I’m still shopping for the right tile for our fireplace surrounds and flip-flopping on carpet options (or whether we even want carpet in some areas – our study in particular right now), it feels so great to finally be moving forward in all sorts of different ways!

Aside from tile and carpet shopping, I had a paintbrush in my hand through much of the week as I started to bring some of my ideas for our main floor to life (you can read about all of my ideas here). This week I decided to start with the doors I’d painted last month that just weren’t sitting right with me. After pondering over the perfect off-black paint colour for days, I picked up a couple of cans of Nightfall from Benjamin Moore and got right to work painting out our pantry, mudroom and kitchen doors. I was a bit worried about how light the colour looked as I started painting, but it quickly dried to a beautiful, dark, almost black.

I was so happy with the depth of colour it had and loved the contrast it brought without being too black, that is, until the next morning when all I could see was blue. While I knew the colour had blue undertones, I wasn’t expecting it to read SO blue. The thing is, it didn’t read blue all of the time – mostly it just looked like a rich almost-black colour, and honestly, even when those blue tones did show through more strongly, I still really loved the colour. My hesitation came from the idea that I’m hoping to paint out some of our built-ins in the same colour as those doors and I’d really envisioned them looking a little more black that the colour I was seeing on these doors. So, back to the drawing board I went and I think I’ve landed on the perfect black this time around – at least I hope so, because I REALLY don’t want to have to paint all of those doors out a fourth time!

While I was thinking over my almost-black colour choices, I decided to tackle the window frames in our kitchen and living room. I really didn’t mind the oak for the time being, but I knew that the windows would eventually be painted out white as we replace the trim throughout the house and I figured that I might as well get them painted before our new window shades come so that we don’t have to remove them to paint down the road. Painting over all that oak was a bigger job than I’d expected and it took far longer than I thought it would (what else is new?), but it feels great to have them all done and ready for the new shades when they arrive. Now, if only I could change out those floors!

I’m planning to take a break from the painting this weekend and hopefully we can tackle a few other things around the house (changing out some light fixtures is currently at the top of my list), but I’m thinking I’ll hop back into some painting projects next week (might just start with those baseboards next).