Goodbye, Antique White

Years ago, shortly after we moved into the house, we needed to do some touch up painting on existing off-white trim and built-ins. I evidently didn't know you could get a custom color match and used my own high-tech method of eyeballing paint chips next to said trim. (All things considered, it didn't work too bad.)

My fatal flaw was that I didn't consider the fact that I strongly disliked that ivory color, and considering we were, you know, redoing the entire house, it was in my power to decide to paint it a different color. Live and learn. It borders on tan with the amount of brown mixed in, and it really doesn't do the bolder wall colors many favors.

I can pretty much tolerate it in the living room, and the bedroom is next on my hit list, but it was driving me redneck crazy in the office where everything else is white. It was all very incohesive, which bothered me because the office is otherwise the most-finished room in the house. It's decorated and accessorized just how I want, so this one massive, glaring "detail" really needed to change. There were a handful of other issues that were grating on me, too. They're noted in this marked-up picture.

 Window casing painted. See how the crown and chair rail is so much darker? Not anymore!

 Closet doors, for contrast. BLEH.

 And after, with their cute little coral Anthropologie hardware. Anthro has the best hardware.

Removed tiny bits of wallpaper that we left on the wall when we removed wallpaper about five years ago and replaced scratched screws on outlet and switch plates, which makes a surprising difference in my little OCD brain. I also slapped a bit of paint on the old ivory outlet (the actual plugs). If you go fast enough with the roller, the paint doesn't get into the holes, which I'm guessing most electricians would say might be a bad thing.

 Mmm...that crisp white against the navy makes my heart happy.

What else... painted the nuts and bolts on the light fixture so they blend better and finally touched up the ceiling where the old fixture was. We put this in almost two years ago. Sometimes I move slow on the things that annoy me the most. What you'll notice from this picture is that there is no dirt halo around the base of the fixture and that you don't see two silver bolts sticking out on either side of the base. It just looks normal.

 Painted the white wall with a fresh coat of more-scrubbable eggshell finish, instead of the primer (possibly just a dead flat paint) that was there (again, from five years ago). It was in rough shape, whatever it was. Lots of holes, some bad, unsanded spackling...it just needed a fresh coat of white.

Not fully put back together, but looking so much crisper.

I've felt thankful every day that I've had this time to knock out all these projects (and there are more to come I'll be posting in the next few days). I'm actually kind of excited now to start working again in my finally finished, not-annoying, cohesive office.