department of the interior: home decor

we have honey colored wood floors and honestly i cant fathom any color but something from the disney kids line looking acceptable with this jaundice color. any suggections? Im strongly leaning toward a pure white with colored tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. this is all open plane btw which adds a degree of difficulty.

I have two questions:

1. If I got with a thickened cream white colored paint (no noticeable yeallow or grey tones), painted the main rooms in the alone but then dressed the wall with some large colorful striking original abstract artwork, would that take some of the coldness away?
2. All of our trim is "cream" (not white like supermarket cream). More a yellowed ivory tbh. I absolutely despise this color. Id really REALLY like a bold color for the trim, but also dont want the place to look like a day care or kris kardashians black and white Calabasas monstrosity. Any ideas?

okay 3rd question:
3. Its perfectly acceptable to paint the outside of you front door a semigloss black, right? I've seen some lime green doors popping up in the hood and as much as I was horrified at first, i now really love them. would not work for our house though what with the clashing shade of green siding :\. So black or maybe charcoal?

ahh and a fourth:
4. what is a good alternative to track lighting? we have a ton of it because our living room, hallway, office and dining room have ceilings up to 30-ft high but to me they just feel like annoying flood lights that serve little purpose. Is it time for lamps? ugh.

oh my fucking god. check out the before and afters here. I know some got stainless appliances too but a lot didnt, just some new cabinet hardware. total cabinet transformation for less than $200. Gahhhhhhhhh. Im SO in love with the espresso. I want to call in sick to work today to do it! FUCK YOU HONEY COLORED WOOD. YOURE OUTTA HERE.

http://cabinets.rustoleumtransformations.com/testimonial-gallery.php

holy crap

you can use it on furniture too! I have the ugliest most hideous oak coffee table that i could totally refinish with this stuff

*considers*

Haha. I'm not into dark stained wood, I'd probably completely paint something before I'd darken it. But if that stuff really works, it could solve your problems, sunny.

Don't hate the nook, Hurting! You have an EIK, I'm jeal.

What if...you don't have to highlight the chair rail, although I would, but what if we flipped the colors and you put a strong color in the kitchen and then also used it on the chair rail in the nook but did the walls in there a much lighter version, or white? Liiiike...an Italian country blue in the kitchen and that same blue on the railing and some other details in the EIK--textiles, artwork, whatever.

Hmm, that's a pretty interesting idea. can you find a pic of the kind of blue you have in mind?

Uhhh hard to tell online but like Benjamin Moore's California Blue or Dark Royal Blue or Blue Macaw--actually these are tending a little teal-ish because that's what I like, but anyway...maybe?

Well, for better or worse we chose this for the top half:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f3N0sic0fhM/UR0Ca6PxpOI/AAAAAAAAAaw/3ZGB0dS7I-Y/s1600/lemonice.jpg
and this for the bottom half:
http://media.benjaminmoore.com/WebServices/prod/ColorSwatch/1633.jpg

I spent like two hours fucking around with Benjamin Moore's digital painter and capture app, which is probably not accurate as to what the color will look like anyway. this blue is a little grayer and less "resorty" than the other one and I like that the top one is going to be a warmer color instead of another blue.

really hard to tell what it's going to look like, e.g. here the bottom color looks WAY greener than it did in the app. But I think that will work if so.

Also trying to figure out how to do the kitchen wall now -- some combination of the two on the rear wall, window grille and radiator I guess.

H found me up in the middle of the night obsessing -- she has taken to calling me "Martha" ever since we started planning the new place. Why you gotta be so gendered about it, man?

We completely blew up the plan for the EIK and chose "soft pumpkin" and "pale oats" instead. Soft pumpkin is what it sounds like, a medium dark but very mellow orange. Pale oats is a lighter shade on the same spectrum.

Good. I didn't like those icy blues for a food and eating and family center room.

exactly how I wound up feeling

Ok, what do folks think -- refinish these floors with a stain, or just use poly and leave them "natural" (note: the stain is just a color, it doesn't have any other affect on the durability of the floors or anything) (note 2: some of the floors are in much worse shape than this. We could maybe get away with not refinishing this one, but we decided to just do them all)

http://i.imgur.com/kXXQ3ZO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/a1eiO6N.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/AILORH3.jpg

Anyone? I'm leaning toward leaving it natural but it's partly a convenience thing (can move in sooner) and it's also cheaper. And also we're "technically" supposed to have 80% coverage with rugs.

my advice was useless so i didn't post it
i would leave it because i am lazy and not fussy about the appearance of my flooring
but like i said that is useless advice

I tend to NOT doing things to wood if there's any doubt. It's possible I lack vision but I can't care. Also if u don't stain and it ever gets a scratch or dig, the other color won't show through.

Also I like the warm warm golden color those old oak floors get--if I were going to stain it would only be to an even deeper amber shade, not a dark one.

if you're 80% rugs and there's no significant damage to any of the flooring, and you're on the fence about it in the first place then I would leave them as is

the only reason we did our floors is because the floors were stained with dog pee and all kinds of stuff from the previous owners, and it was kind of a headache

Just to be clear, we're doing the floors regardless -- some of them are in horrible shape, some of them have stains, and some are under disgusting filthy carpet and we're guessing they don't look great. It's just a matter of whether we do them with stain (color) or without (just polyurethane). The floor in the living room happens to look ok, although it has a lot of discoloration that doesn't show in the photos.

You're stripping them and refinishing? Pick a color you like. Nothing wrong with the natural oak but something darker (browns and/or greys) looks more modern and tends to contrast better with modern furniture/decor.

We have natural oak hardwood floors (found them that way in good condition and left them alone) and I'm vaguely sick of them, don't match anything else we've done with the place.

In general I have a hunch that when people say "modern" they mean like, in this 5 year period and not for the longer term. Dark floors, are those still "a thing" or are we over them yet?

i like this dude's wood floor

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp-is-tumblrs-reluctant-technologist/?_r=0

I think I'm just gonna go no stain since (1) saves money by not paying extra for stain (2) saves time, which saves me more money by being able to move earlier and not risking getting hit up for a month of holdover rent and (3) seems like a crapshoot how it will come out either way, and I've seen plenty of pictures of natural floors where I like the look

I really dig those floors where the wood is of strikingly different tones

oh and also because we're doing a lot of area rug coverage due to toddler running around and making noise and co-op rules

If you're stripping the floors anyway, I don't know that staining would add that much time or expense. Probably only adds one day to the project (which is multi-day anyway, you need multiple coats of poly and time for each one to dry).

If you don't like the overused modern cliches of chestnut and espresso, you could try a grey or even a whitewash, which would give you more of a natural feel without recreating the traditional honey oak color you're sanding off in the first place. That would also help highlight/reveal any variations in the wood color or grain, something like this: http://glittersparkleluxe.blogspot.ca/2013/04/white-wash-stain-and-pickled-wood-floors.html

Can't wait to own a home one day. One thing is certain, it will never be too stuffy or warm and always have blankets should anyone feel too cold, which is more likely. Why is it always hot at everyone else's house?

Welp, turns out we're not staining -- flooring guy says he doesn't really recommend most of the water-based products for floor staining and things we won't be happy with the result. So we're just doing a semi-gloss poly. I think it will turn out fine.

fwiw if I ever get to do new floors, I really love wide plank with reddish hues

so this is the EIK now

http://imgur.com/q80FbJV

Basically happy with it. It looks a little less orangey in person. Two things I sort of wish I did differently: (1) the rail looks like super-super white, so I wish I either didn't do it in semi-gloss or did it in a more muted white. (2) The adjoining room is grey. The grey looks awesome, but it kind of doesn't "flow" with the orangey colors, so they become more jarring from the other room.

We have a red rug that we may put in the adjoining room, so that might help it "transition" or whatever.

There's one other thing that's driving me crazy, which is that we did our bedroom in "misty gray" and I swear to god I can't see the difference between the color and the white on the trim.

sry
http://i.imgur.com/q80FbJV.jpg

Wow, that is very yellow. Re the white rail, I think you'll find once there are furnishings and some other colors of stuff in there, it won't come forward as much.

On the whole, a cheerful room!

Yeah it's the photo, it looks WAY less yellowy/orangey in person. Also the bulbs have a yellowy light so we can always change them.

Stopped by tonight and saw the whole place with bare sanded but unfinished floors. Man it looked so much nicer already.

http://imgur.com/ICM5LA1

So this is a better pic of the paint colors as well as the finished floor, which looks a little more rough than I though it would but I'm pretty happy with it overall.

http://i.imgur.com/ICM5LA1.jpg

Mmm nice floors. Looks very natural, lots of variety in the grain, not a honeyed glaze at all.

yeah the floors under the carpet were better than I expected too. The only unfortunate thing is that there were TONS of staple holes. Area rugs will probably mask most of that.

Sooooo, we kind of hate the EIK colors as it turns out. May wind up repainting it something more neutral.

lol

Apartment websites love to tell you to get all your painting done, shelves hung, etc before you move in. I always wonder what universe they live in that this is even an option, first of all, given the pace of the rental market and the necessity of moving in and out of places on the same day or paying double, and then second I always have to live in a room for a while before I know what it needs. Have to see the light, see how I tend to use the space, etc. Maybe real designers can look at a place and apply their acquired knowledge on the spot, but I can't.

what you need is more orange

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vlwtUxWWMlU/Sf5uRF9YcTI/AAAAAAAAA8I/PDdO66xHVzg/s1600-h/orangecoral.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vlwtUxWWMlU/Sf5uRF9YcTI/AAAAAAAAA8I/PDdO66xHVzg/s1600-h/orangecoral.jpg

ah fuck it

in other news i got a stussy doormat

http://i0.wp.com/hypebeast.com/image/2013/05/stussy-livin-general-store-welcome-large-mat-1.jpg

radical

good adjective for it ;-)

Apartment websites love to tell you to get all your painting done, shelves hung, etc before you move in. I always wonder what universe they live in that this is even an option, first of all, given the pace of the rental market and the necessity of moving in and out of places on the same day or paying double, and then second I always have to live in a room for a while before I know what it needs. Have to see the light, see how I tend to use the space, etc. Maybe real designers can look at a place and apply their acquired knowledge on the spot, but I can't.

― Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit), Thursday, 5 December 2013 23:23 (Yesterday) Permalink

This is all true, in terms of how best to make decisions, but in terms of practicality, especially with a toddler, it's 10x easier to just have everything done in a span of a couple of weeks when the apartment is empty and you don't live there. But it's scary because you're spending more money than you've ever spent in your life, and you have to make a bunch of decisions at once, even if you're not fully renovating -- how/whether to refinish the floors, colors to paint, even small things like do you want a dimmer switch in this room, do you want olde-fashioned or decora switches, what kind of blinds/shades do you want to put up, rugs (co-op so floor has to be heavily covered), rug PADS, etc. Also buying makes you feel a little more invested in how it looks. Current apartment we didn't even think about painting, just fuck it lets keep the off white for whatever 12-24 month period we will probably live here (which was true).

I just spent more on a rug than I think I've ever spent on any furnishing -- every single piece of furniture we own is either craigslist or hand-me-down with the exception of a gift couch (although you wouldn't know it from our awesome taste, ha). But I wanted a friggin huge rug for the bedroom to make sure sound isn't a problem with the downstairs neighbor and the co-op board, and I guess I wanted it to be nice.