COLOR INSPIRATION

For most of my homes over the many years I’ve been a homeowner, I have chosen mostly neutral wall colors. In fact, most of my rooms have been painted a simple white or off white. I felt like the architecture of an old house spoke for itself and color wasn’t really necessary to highlight what was already attractive.

While my new house is a craftsman style and I’m so grateful it has some character, it still doesn’t have the same “chunky feel” or texture as an old house. It has boring ordinary drywall. But even so, I try to stay true to myself and my general sense of what feels like home to me and my husband. So, I want to keep our basic surroundings cozy, neutral and dignified (with a touch of quirky and fun here and there to keep everything from being too serious).

Instead of choosing white for the main rooms this time, I am going with a muted gray with brownish undertones for the walls. That color or a variation of a neutral like it will flow through most of my house. I need to create a new paint colors post with updated paint colors I’m using, so bear with me until I get it done.

So as far the neutrals for my house, white walls alone would have been too bright and not cozy enough for the rooms where I have a lot of large windows. Funny that white walls in this house would have actually felt too bright and contemporary for me and yet in my old house, they were perfectly aged and charming. Hmmmm. What a difference a new house makes!

I am still using white on some walls and on board and batten and trims for contrast and brightness against the gray.

And I’m going to have a couple of rooms with colored walls to keep things unexpected! Note: I’ll be talking about our bright turquoise bathroom hopefully next week. Really. I’ve already taken the photos.

Inspiration for color schemes might come from a piece of fabric, a rug or a favorite painting, just about anywhere! I even have a Pinterest board where I’m starting to stockpile color inspiration!

We sometimes live in fear of color and pattern, and end up too safe, boring, predictable and gasp, matchy matchy in our homes.

If you think about it, there are so many color combinations in nature and do you ever think nature doesn’t go together? Of course not! 

I find personally that I’m more drawn to a color scheme that:

1) captures the general mood I’m after in my home

2) reflects the surroundings both outside and inside my home. For my surroundings, I consider things like the part of the country I’m in, the style of home I have, and other permanent things like my wood floors and woodwork. I guess I feel most at home with neutral backdrops and punches of color as my whims dictate.

Speaking of my part of the country, there are a couple of other NW bloggers that have some pleasant neutral color schemes for their walls if you are interested! Janelle from Isabella & Max (I linked you to a post about her favorite room, her bathroom) and Emily from Jones Design Studio (that link will take you to a post about her kitchen). Both of them use some dark wall gray walls too, but do it well as you’ll see if you poke around their homes! I recently asked Emily about her color scheme and thought you might enjoy her explanation (used with her permission, of course):

“First, I just love neutrals. They are calming, easy on the eyes and neutral – which means you can be fickle about changing accessories and still have them look good. Our walls and major furnishings are all shades of white, gray or black and I like being able to add red at christmastime, green in the spring or yellow in the summer in the form of pillows, books and flowers and still have everything look cohesive. Because it can get gray and dreary in the NW, we have lots of white to keep things bright.”

I agree with Emily! With mostly neutrals, you can go crazy with color any time you want to without so much restraint!

I always love a good design quiz, and this one (see below) from My Colortopia (the awesome new site I write for!) is pretty fun.  You can also find the quiz on My Colortopia.

If you answer the questions in the box below, it will give you a custom color palette you might like!  You might have to click over if you are reading this in an email or reader. Try it out, I think mine was pretty accurate and even gave me a couple of ideas for accent colors and perhaps an entire palette I might use for my bedroom! WOO HOO!

PAINT PALETTE QUIZ

How about you? Did the quiz give you a color scheme you like?

Are you fearless or scared when it comes to choosing colors for your home?

I have partnered with Glidden/ Akzo Nobel Paints for this post and the My Colortopia program but the thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

Cheap Therapy: Chevron Pillow

Confession. I talk kinda funny. I have a few words that confuse people as to what I’m talking about. Like instead of “about” I say “a boat.” I always have. Anyway, recently my girls pointed out to me that I say pillow wrong. I say “pello.” I didn’t know I was saying it wrong all these years. I don’t know if my parents didn’t correct me or if I have some crazy unknown accent, but I just say things funny. Now you know.

So, in addition to talking funny, I’m kind of a pello, I mean, PILLOW, addict. I would buy tons of them if I was wealthy. And I would sew tons of them if I wasn’t always too busy to sew. But every now and then, I just have to have a new pillow.

The other day I ran across that cute chevron pillow cover, above, on etsy. She is not a sponsor, this was just a random discovery. You can find her work via Castle Creek Designs Facebook page here. The pillow is actually a gorgeous blue, not black as it appears in the dismal lighting of January.  It looks fabulous with my dining room curtains. So naturally, I had to have it. Everyone has a chevron something right now so I guess for $12 (the pillow cover was on sale!) I will too. A little trendy is fun.

I love pillows.

I also remember buying a pillow in May, in anticipation and HOPE of sunny summer days. Apparently I think pillows will bring more sun in my life, and they do make me happy. I suppose it is cheap therapy — no harm done, right?

And thanks to having white slipcovers, I can pretty much buy any new pillow I fall in love, with because they almost always look great on white. I like options. I like rotating pillows on a whim with the seasons, the weather, and the trends. I always have big stacks of pillows in the corner of my bedroom, just waiting for a new whim when I feel like switching pillows.

So, are you a pillow addict? And, confess: do you talk funny?

Wood Countertop in the Kitchen

FAQ from readers about my counters

I have had quite a few readers recently ask me about my wood counters in my old house and if they were difficult to take care of.  I love that this kitchen was designed before my blogging days, but it still gets a lot of questions I haven’t officially answered in a post!

So today, I’m going to finally answer the most common reader questions about my wood counters.

Just like I did with The Truth About White Slipcovers post or How I Keep my Stainless Steel Appliances Clean, or Do I Have a Maid (and other questions about open shelving), I like to tell you about my own experiences so you can decide for yourself if you think something is too difficult, or worth having in your own home.

In other words, I loved my wood counters, like my stainless appliances and white slipcovers and even my open shelving, but they may not be the best choice for everyone.

Disclaimer: Not all wood counters will be of the same quality or care level nor will your experience or necessary care be exactly like mine. I’ve never had IKEA butcher block counter tops so I cannot compare them with these.

Q. Why did you choose wood instead of a stone counter top like granite?

We were trying to get away with only doing what was necessary or gave us the most bang for our buck in our kitchen remodel. We had to do so much out of necessity, we were as mindful as we could be about how to save money by making one choice over another. Our counters HAD to be replaced, that part we knew for certain. We were originally going to use soapstone on our counters and wood for our floors. We really wanted the floors to be wood to balance out the hardness of stone counters.

But, when we realized how much it was going to cost us to rip out our brick colored tile to install hardwood, we decided it just wasn’t worth the expense to do the floors at that time. So we kept the existing tile floors and went with wood counters on our island and soapstone just on the counter around our stove.

Q. Who made the wood counter and what kind of wood is it?

The wood counters were custom made for us on site by our remodeling contractor with wood my husband selected from a lumber place near our home in Portland, Oregon. They were thick slabs of Brazilian Cherry (I can’t remember how thick, maybe an inch and a half or two inches?), and the planks were probably like four inches wide but glued together to form a smooth gorgeous counter top.

Q. Did you stain your counters?

They were not stained at all, they were sealed with a few coats of Aqua Spar (a type of marine sealer) and that is it. What you see is its natural color after the sealer is applied. Before the sealer, they looked lighter and less rich.

Q. How did you keep them from getting water stains or scratches?

One, the sealer is designed to protect the wood as if it was a wood boat in water. That is how good that Aqua Spar stuff is.

But secondly, we treated that counter like it was a fine piece of wood furniture or our own child. We caressed it and babied it, kept it clean and dry all day, and didn’t set harmful objects directly on it, and never left water glasses on our counter. You can see in the above picture we used my grandma’s doilies under some of our accessories before doilies for decor became chic again! Ha!

There were even a few incidents where we left the filtered water faucet running into an overflowing cup on the counter and that meant water went everywhere. Oops! But still, no harm done.

But, before you think we were crazy to have wood counters, we felt it was worth the extra TLC because those counters made us happy every single day. Yes, counters made us happy. They did! They were gorgeous.

And a side benefit was our counters were never piled up with dishes or mess because we loved them too much to leave dirty dishes on them!! We kept that kitchen much cleaner than we do our kitchen right now. Hmmmm…. something to think about.

Q. You must not have kids. Or teenagers.

We had preschool aged boys AND teenagers living or hanging out regularly in our home. Lots of kids at once. Yes, it was a bit risky to have beautiful wood counters like that in a busy family kitchen. Someone could have put a water ring on our counter or scratched them! Oh no! But I knew they were just counters. Had we needed to, we could have sanded and resealed. But, we taught our kids about setting dirty or wet dishes in the sink, dishwasher, or on a place mat rather than directly on the wood. They learned to put dishes away instead piling them up on a counter.

I might also note here that this was the second kitchen where we had wood counters (and kids). Our first kitchen when our girls were little also had wood counters. We had no problems with those wood counters either (I believe they had been made out of wood flooring and sealed.)

Q. What about wood counters and entertaining?

If our kids had friends over or we had a party, we didn’t make a big public deal about protecting our precious counter tops. We LIVED in our home, it wasn’t a museum. In other words, we realized we were the only ones who were going to care enough about our counters to keep them clean and free of potential harm. We didn’t want to make everyone feel uncomfortable at our house because we were always in a big panic about our counters.

We let people of all ages eat and cook in our kitchen and we didn’t give them a list of rules for how to take care of the counters. At least I don’t remember doing that! HA! If necessary, we just waited until everyone left and then we’d go in and clean up the kitchen our way, no harm done.

Q. What about heat marks, food prep and cutting?

We didn’t set hot pans on our wood counters. Nor did we put food directly on our counters or use them as a cutting board.

Q. What was the long term care like? Did you have to refinish them?

One time a couple of years after our kitchen was finished we did reapply the Aqua Spar (after a quick once over with some steel wool) to give it a fresh protective coat of sealer. It was quick and easy and the counter looked just as beautiful after the second treatment as the first. Very simple care.

Q. Do you recommend wood counters?

It depends. The reason I was willing to give my counters so much TLC was that I loved how they looked and felt (literally, I would stroke them all day long because I’m insane like that).  So, my advice is always that if you find something beautiful you love that might require a bit more care than something you don’t love as much, go with what you love.

If you are at all like me and appreciate beautiful things, taking care of something lovely is not really a burden at all.

I’d rather have a house full of things I adore and lovingly care for than a house of safe upholstery and indestructible surfaces that I really dislike, but chose because they hides all dirt and marks.

But, on the flip side, if you don’t like to deal with extra care or risk and you can find something you love that is also indestructible, you might prefer something a bit less fussy.

Have you had wood counters in a kitchen before? What are your experiences?