Painted Floors...what should I do?!?

Due to the fact that we are a family of 5 on one teacher's salary.  We don't have the budget to lay down the flooring I'd like and I don't want to settle on some crap that will work for now!  I know good and well that if we put down crappy flooring it will stay.  I DON'T want crappy flooring!!  So, I have been internally debating about painting the floor.

Remember when I pulled the carpet up in my dining room and kitchen.  The carpet in the kitchen was that nasty 80's thin crapet (yes, I know I typed crapet on purpose!).  It had a tile looking pattern and that yellow foam backing that apparently doesn't come off the stupid floor!!


Well after walking on it for 3 months we have worn down most of the crap and I think I could get away with painting it now!!

In the begin stages of my blogdom (you know, when no one but family read my blog)  I had a post with inspirational pics of painted flooring! 

Little Blue Chairs' Blog

I love the huge checker board pattern!

Coastal Living

Design Sponge

Another Large Checkerboard

Oooo Diagonals!

I like the border around the edge, definitely doing this for ours.  It looks more finished.

Loving this!  I'm thinking I like the colors and worn look for this floor!

I like the idea of striped too, because this would be much easier than checkerboard.

This could be an easy alternative to checkerboard, because you could just use really wide painters tape!

This is nice and I love the ceiling!!

Those were all the pics from my first post on the subject of painting the floor.  I have since found more pics that I have been lusting after!!

This one makes me a little dizzy, but it's so beautiful!!

I am thinking just a plain white floor would be simple and awesome!  Jonathan Adler did this one and it is to die for!

This room is way too much for me but I do love the floor. It's like s strappy quilt that has random pieces ordered by a perfect grid. This idea could be executed in a million different ways.

DIY Showoff

The last pic is done in a bathroom and she has the perfect shade of brown called Journey-the browns I find always look like poo!

So, what should I do?!?  I am thinking white floor with a painted "rug" under where (say it fast underwear hahaha...hey, it's late!) the dining room table will be and a real rug for the kitchen.

I don't want too much going on visually on the floor because I painted my stairs and I love them!!

-Make your life beautiful!!

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My dining room....is getting there! plus the befores

Yesterday, I showed you my dining room, but blogger wouldn't let me load stuff and after an hour I just posted what I had gotten done on the post.  So, today I finish the post!

Plus, I didn't tell you......  the Grocery sign is made from the inserts in your dresser designed to keep your clothes from falling to the underneath drawer!!

I totally forgot to show a pic of the dining room before and then an after so you can compare.  Blogger was being a booger for me, so I didn't make the list of crap I had done either.  :)  So here we go!

Dining Room

before

This is the pic before we bought it.

A similar view, but after :)

Another before

Another After :)

look closely and you can see I haven't painted the kitchen area yet!

One last before

And My lovely after:

Okay my list of stuff we've done:
1.  Painted it green-decided I didn't like it and repainted Ralph Lauren Cobblestone which is my go to neutral color (LOVE IT!)
2.  Painted all the trim white-it was an orangey golden oak color-YUK!
3.  Yanked up all the carpet-for now we are living on subfloors and my Pier 1 rug that is too small for under the table.  It's way better than someone's dirty carpet.   Plus, way easier to clean up spills-it is a dining room after all. 
4.  Made some art for the walls-more on that later.
5.  Hung the kid's art gallery wall
6. Replaced the crappy misplaced fan and weird bug filled globe light with my Pottery Barn Knock-Off Chandeliers.
7.  Redid some freebie stools my mom scored me from her apartment that were getting thrown out!
8.  Got bamboo blinds from Payless Decor


Remember when I talked about my green chair inspiration.  Well, I am hoping to have some headway with that project soon!

I am currently working on all my dining chairs.  I scored these chairs from H4H (Habitat for Humanity) for $2 each during their Memorial Day Sale.

I actually already had 2 from a while back, so I have 10 matching dining chairs for $16-can't beat that with a stick!!  I have taken all the seats off and primed them.  Two of them are green and I am slowly getting them done.  To tell you the truth I am not totally sold on the green.  I really want to paint them all white or black or charcoal-but I know that's the safe thing to do so we'll see.  It's only paint and time, I can always redo them again.

More on those later!
Now the red folding chairs at my table now are outside chairs I brought in when we had friends over last weekend, they looked like this before:

 A few coats of red Krylon spray paint later and.....

  I didn't prime them or sand them-they are outside chairs and that was too much work!!  Just dusted them off and scraped a little loose paint.

-Make your life beautiful!!

Featured over at Domestically Speaking! Love it :)

I was spotlighted over at Domestically Speaking's Power of Paint Party for my painted stairs!!!

So exciting!!

-Make your life beautiful!

Painted Stairs- The BIG REVEAL!!!

 I love them!  I keep walking by them and smiling!  The walls haven't been painted up the stairs yet, that's on Friday's TO DO List!  My parents are coming over on their day off to help Mr. TSL and I redo the bathroom and paint the vaulted stairwell-I am super afraid of heights...... and roller coasters, well any carnival-type ride really.

If you will recall the little stairs looked like this to begin:

This is the BEFORE WE MOVED IN picture!

This is after I tore the carpet off-I love the Harley, our border collie's feet at the top!

After thinking I could stand them like this for a long long time, it took about 2 weeks and I needed to do something with them.  So, I decided to paint them with porch paint!  I looked for lots of inspiration. I decided that I am keeping the palette of our house in Ralph Lauren Cobblestone, black, white, and shades of green.  I decided the stairs should be green-I found a fabulous shade of green, but flubbed that up!

Then they looked like this----GAG!!

 I rushed back to Wal-Mart and exchanged the color for a fabulous shade of Army Green!

Here are the little stairs redone-please disregard the kilz primer on the wall-it will be painted over soon!

And now for the big stairs!!

They looked like this:

After much inspiration and quite a few back aches, I am proud to present my new stairs!!

So, what do you think?  Do you love them?!?

Cost- $19.97 for porch paint (I only used 1/2 gallon, still have 1/2 gallon-what to do?:) )


-Make your life beautiful!!

The glass is half full!

Er, I mean the stairs are half painted!!  I am painting another coat over the first one today and then hopefully they will be totally done by Saturday!

I am so excited, they look spectacular :)  I have also decided to paint all the trim in the house white, it will look so much cleaner and crisp when this gets done.  Notice I said when.....  I am going to start priming them hopefully today (not all of it, just the dining room)  The dining room is getting repainted to match the living room and since it doesn't matter if I get primer and paint on the old wall paint, I can just go to town.

However, because I have already painted: the living room, the master bathroom, and the master bedroom, I am going to have to be careful doing the trim.  In steps my ingenuous mom, she said just take the trim off label it with numbers and paint it with a roller!

Awe to the Some!!  So, I will be recruiting her for said task and also to paint the vaulted stair well.  I am super scared of heights and am not EVER going to get on the ladder to paint it!  Unfortunately, this may not happen for a while.  This weekend she is babysitting my super cute nephews on Friday and Saturday.  Not thinking she wants to do it on Sunday--probably that's a grandma recoup day!  Then next weekend is Easter. However, she does have some days off from work and weather permitting, I bet she'll go for it :) 
Love you mom!

Since, I will be painting the stairs and fixing my office area (I put together the vintage table of my mother-in-laws for our desk!) I am not ready to reveal...boo :( 

Just realized I have been writing and no pictures, nobody reads blogs for the content..jk, so here are some inspirational pics!

I got a new entertainment center-actually it's a dresser, but I love it! I used the paint tool to draw some inspirational decorating on it (I just learned how to use paint on top of a photo-LOVE!)

Like the wonky lamps?  :)

Please note: the bottom drawers were being glued, but I couldn't wait to take a pic of it.  They are now in place!

I fake painted the trim white with the paint tool too!  I am thinking I like the black and white curtains!
Like these amazing curtains:

The Yellow Cape Cod

Decor Pad

Also for curtain inspiration is how, Michael over at Inspired by Charm did his curtains.

I love this idea!  He is a creative genius! 

I am painting my curtains, like Meredith over at Welcome to Heardmont did with her shower curtain!

Off to paint my stairs!

-Make your life beautiful!