Guess Who's Back, Back Again...

Shady's back, tell your friends!

Okay, okay, I have no idea where Eminem is, but I'm back... please contain your excitement.

What is exciting (for me, at least!) is that I've got my first project for the "Furbishing" category here! And it's only 4 years in the making. Relax, it's about as low-key as imaginable. We bought these bright blue Ikea Nyttja frames back in 2009. I loved the color in the store, and maybe for a hot second once we got them home, but almost immediately decided to paint them black. Maybe because I was so annoyed that they come in black and I could have just bought them that way, I never got around to doing it.

Flash forward 4+ years and 3 apartments later, and I've finally done it. Except that instead of black I used Martha Stewart Crafts Multi-Surface Metallic Acrylic Craft Paint in Brushed Bronze.

Here's the before. (Ignore the unpainted area around the electric socket... we're about to paint the guest room... Again. It's currently Benjamin Moore's Stone 2112-40 with Shakespeare Tan 228 around the sockets- never got around to finishing up!):

 Much to my chagrin, I had to do 3 coats. Not super impressed, but I also didn't sand it down at all so I guess I can't complain... too much. ;) Here it is after one coat:

And here's the after:

I think I love it. I have the same frame hanging in the bathroom and I think I'm going to do the same thing. That print is from the same Ikea trip 4 years ago, btw. Jazzing it up all around the town!

Meanwhile, we're STILL in the process of picking a paint color for the living room... I know I want it to be gray, but all of the samples we've tried so far just aren't quite right. Too blue, too green, too dark, too purple, too light... you get the idea. We LOVE the color that it is now (Studio Taupe by Behr), but we painted before we moved in (two years ago!) and it doesn't look right with our tan couches. Lucky for us, we still have an extra gallon of it, so I'll be using that to paint the guest room... at some point.

Next up for the guest room? I'm thinking of painting some kind of pattern on top of that nightstand (chevron, maybe?) and replacing the knobs. The nightstand is a Craigslist find, and we've been using it as an entryway table until this week. The knobs are from Anthropologie and were bought to match our hallway decor, but they'll actually work really well on our bedroom nightstand. I'd like to get some branch-like handles for this one. I was thinking of something along the lines of this, but a quick Pinterest search just came up with this, which I might like even better, so we'll see!