Saturday, October 1, 2011

sunshine daisies butter mellow

My apartment, located on the top floor of an old three-story building, is actually rather large. It's the whole floor. The only apartment in the building to be the whole floor. We have three bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom. And a really long hallway.
Until about twenty years ago, the first floor played host to a string of shops over its one hundred year existence. Originally a general store with living quarters for the owners on the floors above, it has large glass windows the height of the floor to ceiling of the first floor. It looks really sweet and old-fashioned, but I'm not so certain I would like my living room window quite that large. The residents of the first floor apartments on the street side hang large curtains over the windows.
When I moved into the apartment, the walls were all a most unattractive beige with scuffed white trim. I, of course, immediately decided that needed to change. I wanted each room to be brightly coloured. When you walk in the back door, you can catch glimpses of the walls of almost every room (the bathroom and one bedroom excluded) off the hallway, which ends in the very large living room. So I planned to do a sort of Dorothy Draper thing...

A photo from the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, showing a view through several corridors and rooms into the Victorian Writing Room, was my inspiration.
Most of the rooms have been painted. (I'm actually taking a break from painting the living room as I write this.)
All of the bedrooms are along the right side of the hall as you walk in. You can't see the colour in the first bedroom because the door opens against the wall visible from the back door, for which I am grateful. My old flatmate, who lived in that room, painted it a miserable grey-brown, which I hate. (I plan to repaint it, but it's not a priority.) The middle bedroom hasn't been painted yet and is, therefore, still a beige colour. And the bedroom where my boyfriend and I sleep, the last and largest bedroom, is a purply-blue lavender. (The colour I've wanted to paint my room since I was a kid but was never allowed.)
Along the left of the hallway are the kitchen and dining room. The bathroom is off of the kitchen. The kitchen is painted a sunshine yellow and the dining room a dark peacock blue-green. (The bathroom is wainscotted; I've painted it white. Above the wainscotting, the walls are black. And the ceiling is a magenta colour.) And the living room, which I am currently painting, is a colour called mint shake green.
The hallway is a sky blue. I'm buying a stencil to paint the walls to look like wallpaper. The second colour is a darker blue.
I'll return to my painting. Hopefully the cats haven't tracked too many paw prints around the apartment. Or gotten their tails covered in green paint...
I will post pictures with my fancy new Nikon camera as soon as I can.

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