The Power Of Paint

Wanna know a secret? There is one thing, above all other things, that is almost like magic when you are looking to completely change the look of a room or a piece or furniture. Something that doesn’t have to cost a whole lot of money and that almost everyone can do, with a little practice, whether they have much design experience or not. Would you like me to let you in on this secret?

Okay I will but only because I really like you and we’re friends.

It’s paint!

I thought I’d share just a couple things I’ve done with paint to show you what I mean.

Furniture

I purchased this tallboy dresser off the LetGo app for $30. It’s solid wood, very heavy and was in very good, clean condition, but as you can see it is dated and dark.

No problem there!

A couple coats of chalk paint later, some dark wax and some new hardware and it was a whole new piece. You’d have never guessed at it’s former look. I have a blog post that I wrote showing each step of it’s makeover, if you’d like more details as to how I refinished it.

It resides in my Master Bedroom and is so much fun to style.

Walls

When I moved into my current home, this is what the room looked like that I made into the dining room. It was a family room but since there was already a living room within a few feet of this room, and no dining room, I decided to turn this space into a formal dining room.

This room was like a cave with it’s dark wall color and no ceiling light, in spite of its large window and light colored carpet.

Check out the difference that paint can make! Although I’ve replaced the light colored carpet with dark wood, just by painting the walls a light color it has completely opened up this space. Yes, I did put a ceiling light in this room, but as you can see by this photo, I don’t even have it on when I took this picture.

Here is the room again before, when it was set up as a family room, before I moved in. The windows are opened up on a sunny day so this is as light and bright as it gets.

And here is the same space now, standing in almost the same spot, with the blinds open on a sunny day. Can you believe the difference? That’s just paint, my friends. As I mentioned before, I even added much darker flooring so that would have made it darker than before, yet look how much the paint alone has opened this space up!

One final angle of the same room. Standing in the kitchen facing those large windows. In the original photos of the room there were only blinds at the windows. Now I also have curtain panels which would block a small amount of light as well and cover a little of the windows.

Cabinets

Before I moved in, this was the kitchen. The cabinets were light honey oak and the one back wall of the kitchen was a very dark espresso brown, the other walls were a medium taupe brown color. You can see the original vinyl flooring was also just a light color and mostly white appliances.

My original change to this space involved painting out the walls in a very pale sea blue and in spite of refinishing the cabinets in a very dark red/brown, the overall look is still very bright. In this photo I had also just added the granite countertops which are dark granite when the original laminate was cream so that is an additional hit of dark but the lightness of the walls still maintains the bright overall feel.

Then I refinished the cabinets again, this time bright and white because of the dark granite and dark wood floors. I chalk painted them, then antiqued them a little. Can you believe they are the SAME cabinets as that original honey oak kitchen and then the dark cabinets and now this?

Another shot of the kitchen cabinets before I painted them….

And after. I don’t know if you noticed or not but something else in this kitchen also got hit with some paint.

The floors.

But that’s a blog post for another day!

For now, let’s head on over to Emily’s house and see a couple of her amazing paint transformations. Simply click on the photo below.