A Forgotten Step

In the interests of full disclosure - in case anyone actually uses my advice on painting wood furniture - I figured I should also mention the real first step in the whole process: looking for inspiration. We have 7 chairs around our dining room table, so doing anything to them - whether it was replacing them, painting them, staining them, or anything else - was going to make a big impact in our living/dining room. I didn't just want to jump in to the colour-picking phase of the game assuming that brightly-coloured chairs would look good against our very rustic, very heavy, unfinished wood farmhouse table. (This is where I mention that my lovely mother-in-law is pretty sure that thing is a legitimate antique...a couple hundred years old, perhaps. I desperately want to validate that supposition: it would be awesome.)

So, I trolled Teh Interwebz in search of pictures of colourful chairs seated around wooden tables. These are the best examples I came across: (...and they're all on my Pinterest pages)

Obviously, the chairs in the first picture are the most like ours. Really, that was what convinced the Husband that he wasn't a fan of bright yellow chairs in our dining room. They just jarred too much. And unlike me, he doesn't like the look of sunny yellow against navy blue. Le sigh, there's no accounting for taste - but as I said: since it's his house, too, he deserved the right to veto ideas he didn't like. Besides, in the end, I'm a big fan of the colour we have. We've really lucked out with how much we end up loving the Valspar paints we pick for each of my DIY projects. And there's something satisfying about having the Husband chime in unsolicited when he sees the result of my efforts to say how much he likes the look of something. Besides, I value his opinion, and he's always willing to throw in his two cents when I ask him for it. (Which is basically all the time!)

So the above pictures convinced me that it was possible for my vague idea to come off looking super spiffy. Which is always a handy thing to know when you're as uncertain as I am whenever I'm about to commit to a big decision. It's fair to want to be original, but if you can find pictures of people doing something similar to whatever look you're after, it can really help you visualise the whole thing and decide much better if it's really a good idea.

My next big change? Eventually, once there's some disposable income, I'd love to replace the rug in our living room. Something lighter (the current one is dark brown) that coordinates with our things more...and hopefully, that doesn't require quite so much vacuuming to look presentable. That said, there's only so much to be done when your floor is covered in half-eaten Cherrios.

And now, there's a bed and two Excedrin with my name on them. Time to nip this flu-like nonsense in the bud.