Renovate Brooklyn! Day Twenty-Six: We Reign Victorious!

I know,  I know... I promised I'd get back to work on the apartment after my two big work projects were completed on Wednesday, but then -- well you know how it goes-- more work piled up and I just had to do the "must" pile before I could tend to the "want to" pile. However, I did take the time to finish painting the checkered floor on Friday night before we zipped up to the country...

You can see the first half of this project here and here! 

It is such a funny thing about these projects. You're plugging along, measuring, taping, painting... blah, blah, blah... And you're saying quietly to yourself "Why am I doing this?" Like actually, literally, WHY AM I DOING THIS??? But you persevere, you finish up because quitting when only half of your floor is painted with a checkered pattern is going to be pretty obvious. And then you take the tape off, you flip the rug back in place, you move the furniture back in, and suddenly you're saying, into a mega-phone no less, "I AM A GENIUS! LOOK AT MY HARD WORK AND BRILLIANT RESULTS!" And you immediately forget how tedious and irritating the whole process was to begin with.

I think someone recently equated this sensation to child birth... If you could remember the experience more clearly, every woman would only ever have one child. 

The paint colors, for inquiring minds, are: 

VALSPAR PORCH & DECK, Satin Finish

6007-1C Oregon Coast

3005-10C Woodrow Wilson Linen

     Looking pretty sharp, no? 

We've got lots of new projects on the docket... For one thing, I am thinking about stenciling an accent wall in the bedroom. (Yes- stenciling! I know- it sounds like I am becoming a crafting housewife, but let's be honest- that woman has always been inside of me and she's breakin' out!) I found this rad stencil online and I think I'm going to stencil one or two of the smaller walls in the bedroom. Yow! Stencils! I was inspired by this picture I found online, but I think I'm going to go with something a little less "psychedelic mad-house/heavy-handed designer", and err more toward "soothing pattern that is the first thing I see when I wake up..." 

Then, we still have to tear down our kitchen ceiling (far easier to type than do) and expose the tin ceiling above. For those of you not based in New York, the tin ceiling is the most coveted of pre-war details-- it is one of the things that makes it worthwhile to live in a tenement building full of crazy people, along with the cheap rent and other old world charms (aka. stairs)... So that should be a cinch. Ha. 

And then John is supposedly going to refinish our living room coffee table, but that's a whole other story... 

Check out tomorrow's entry for more on 

the triumphant story of the coffee table, and so much more! 

(We just started making our own pizza dough and focaccia. 

Yow! These recipes are delicious. Stay tuned!)