Tuesday’s Tip ~ Trust Your Instincts

 Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone is having a decent week so far. I just got home from attending a Hunter Douglas Window Coverings seminar with Jill and I’m feeling a bit inspired! Sometimes those things are totally and completely boring, but tonight’s was pretty insightful and full of good information!

I’m busy painting our guest room/play room in preparation of upcoming visitors. I’m so excited about being able to have a guest room again where our family (both my husband’s and my family are up in the bay area) and friends can stay while they are visiting.

So far, it’s been quite an investment of time. It started out like this…

 First round of sanding.

This picture below was taken on Sunday, right before I invested two days of nap time to the actual painting phase of this beastly project. Since the previous pictures, the paneling was completely sanded, primed and the ceiling painted, and new crown molding and casings have been put in. I still have to tackle painting the window, sliding door and I’m hoping to talk my dad into spraying the closet doors white!

 Excuse the messy bookcase.

So on this wall, you can tell I’ve been experimenting with paint colors. And after 2 days of painting, I decided I didn’t like the color we had chosen. I told Jason that I just didn’t like it the color when he got home from class, and this was his response…”Yeah, I never liked that color.”
Great.

I really wanted this room to be light and airy and once I started painting it Benjamin Moore’s Baby Fawn (which is a great color and I’m using it in other rooms in the house) it just seemed to suck all the light out of this room. So again, back to the drawing board. I’ve spent a small fortune on paint samples. We decided to try a green in here (the color I wanted to do initially…why didn’t I trust my instincts?) So today I headed back to the paint store. I even got another tester pint of a paint color we had in our old house that I had already gotten a sample of to try, decided against, and then disposed of it properly at the hazardous waste disposal event!

After all this, I got to thinking that this could be a “Tuesday’s Tip”…
Trust Your Instincts! 

Now that’s not to say you don’t need a little (or a lot of!) professional guidance.  You may have an idea of what you would love your home to look like or how you would like it to feel or function, but you’re just not sure how to execute the master plan to make it all work together. And that’s where a professional would come in. However, trust your gut in what makes you and your family happy.  When I’m working with clients and they ask what I would pick from the choices I have provided, I always give them my opinion, but I always follow up with “But it’s your home and you’re going to be living with it every day and I want you to be happy in your space.”

 As Jill mentioned in a previous post, if you really love a color, stick with it. Don’t try to change the fact that you love a certain color scheme.  If you’ve found a certain fabric that you can’t live without, go with it. If you find something special for your home that you just love while you’re out shopping, buy it. You will always find a spot for it somewhere if you love it.

I am working with a client right now on her master bathroom and as we were discussing what finishes she gravitated towards, we got to talking about her kitchen she remodeled a year and a half ago. She really wanted a more neutral back splash because she knew how much she liked to change her decor throughout the year, and she didn’t want anything competing with that.  People tried to convince her to do something a bit more daring, with a pop of color in her back splash, as some would see it as more creative.  But she stuck to her guns.  She knew that she, personally, would tire of more color.  And she knew the joy she had when she was able to switch her dishware, decorations, etc. out for different seasons and holidays. So she trusted her instincts and ended up with a beautiful, neutral back splash that is the perfect backdrop to all her seasonal and holiday decorations.

Only you know what you’ll love waking up to every morning. And yes, sometimes we don’t know how to pull it all together or pick out the best paint color.  And when that happens, it’s ok to ask for help. But in the meantime, you have to trust your instincts and go with what you love.

I’ll keep you posted on how the new color turns out! Hopefully I don’t need to make any more trips to the paint store…at least for that room :)