A Quick Facelift

As you many of you know, Nate and I moved into our home at the end of May.  In the nine months since then we have almost completely remodeled our entire first floor (hence this blog).  Well, it is time to start making some changes already.  Can you imagine?!  Why can't we just be satisfied with the things that we have already done?  Actually, this change was quick, inexpensive, and pretty darn easy.
If you remember our den remodel, you will remember the two white bookshelves on either side of the fireplace.  As a reminder, here is a lovely photo for you.

ORIGINAL BUILT-INS

Being huge fans of another home design blog (www.younghouselove.com), I came across this photo and was inspired by what they did to their built-ins.

YOUNG HOUSE LOVE BUILT-INS

You can see that they chose to paint the back of their built-ins a very bold and saturated color.  The walls in our den are already a pretty bold color, but I loved the idea of doing a different color back.  I chose a color that complemented the gray-blue of our den walls and the color of our stone fireplace. It was off to Home Depot to have them color match me a sample container of Benjamin Moore's Graystone.

BENJAMIN MOORE GRAYSTONE

Nate remembered that we he had used a similar color in our townhouse and that we still had some of that color left.  We mixed our small sample color with our leftovers (Behr Ashwood) and created a custom color that we both really liked.  So, on a Tuesday evening I removed everything from the built-ins to begin the project.  I made sure to keep all of the things that I took down from each shelf together so that I could easily pack the shelves the same way that they were before.

CUSTOM COLOR (WE CALL IT ASH GRAY STONE WOOD)

SHELVES ROW BY ROW

I put two coats of paint of the Ash Gray Stone Wood  on each built-in and let the paint dry overnight before reinstalling the bookshelves and all of the stuff that goes onto them.  (Actually, Nate was nice enough to have all of the shelves put back by the time I arrived home from work on Wednesday).

ONE SIDE COMPLETE, ONE MORE TO GO!

ALL PAINTED

FINISHED!

READING FOR ITS CLOSE UP

We both really like the way that the subtle color ties the fireplace into everything.  The color helps the fireplace look larger, and helps the built-ins not dominate the wall so much, letting the fireplace become the star of the show.  The color sample was $2.84 and we already had the color that we mixed it with, so this entire project cost us under $3.00 and took us a total of 1 1/2 evenings.  Not bad!
It should also be noted that we consider this our comfy, cozy, hang out in, and watch TV room so we are OK with darker colors in this room.  It makes it feel like our very own cozy cocoon!