Painted Built-Ins & Stripes on the Wall

In the last week I have done a few "quick" updates around the house. Here are the before and after photos.  Enjoy!

Painted built-ins:
I was inspired by this room- http://www.mysocalledhome.com/2012/08/the-built-ins-our-summer-living-room.html?m=1
The built-in bookcases that I love so much in our living room seemed like the perfect place to inject some unexpected color into what is otherwise a really neutral space. I choose a deep blue green color and after 3 really quick coats of paint on each built-in shelf, this project was finished! We love the finished product since even the toddler toys on the shelves look great against their new backdrop.

Here's the before from when we first closed on the house (July 2009). 

This is how it looked once we got rid of the nasty mocha trim and sprayed the brass fireplace doors.

                        

This one is from December 2009 after we painted the fireplace.

Jim used bead board to update the backs of the built-in shelves in the fall of 2011 since I adore beadboard on everything! You can see the bead board here at Hadley's first birthday party. When it was white it definitely was neutral and understated.

Here are the built-ins this week with the backs freshly painted with Benjamin Moore's Dragonfly from their Affinity line. The fine folks over at YoungHouseLove used this color on their more substantial shelving in their dining room so I knew that it would look really nice. Now that the beadboard is painted this beautiful blue green color it makes the space feel so much more sophisticated.   **Before Hadley was born we found and re-attached the doors to the lower shelves (hello child-proofing and clutter hiding).

Stripes on the wall:
I was inspired by this makeover- http://www.younghouselove.com/2009/06/walking-the-line/
In our smallest bedroom, I decided to use one wall to increase the "little jewel box" quotient of the space with tone on tone neutral stripes. This room is going to get a lot more use when the baby arrives in July so I would love for it to be a comfortable, luxurious space that I actually enjoy being in without feeling super claustrophobic.

This room started very bare and white when we first moved in.

By the time we brought our sweet baby home, the room had been painted a warmer color (Glidden Sand White) and was ready for a tiny occupant.

Here is the tiny room from another angle on the day that we brought baby Hadley home from the hospital.

 

Hadley moved into what had been our guest room around her first birthday and the tiny bedroom once again became an office/craft/catch-all room. Now that we are transforming the room, the stripes really do make it feel special.

This is when I first started taping the lines on the wall with Frog Tape. Love that stuff!!

The stripes are complete. The lighter color that I used for the tone on tone stripes is Glidden Wishes (a cream that I've used throughout our house like in the living room above).

Here's a before/after collage to show how much impact the stripes alone have made in this little space. It's funny because the lighting was so different in the photos that the lighter stripes make the darker Sand White paint looks really tan in the after shot. Lighting makes such a difference and I need to learn to use the camera better obviously.

This room is still a major work-in-progress but I wanted to post the stripes since they look so great. It's funny because they turned out looking a lot like the stripes that Jim had painted in his townhouse (and I had always given him heck about having stripes) but now I completely get the appeal. ;)