Before & After: Paintingtimez in the Bedroom

Dear Normal Person,

What do you like to do for your birthday? Do you like to eat spaghetti with your fiancé, simultaneously slurping on the same noodle until you eventually kiss? Do you like to go to Chuck E Cheese’s with a group of grown ups just to terrify the children and their parents? Do you like eat birthday cake, alone, in the closet?

What do I like to do for my birthday, you ask? Well, I like to force my friends to paint my bedroom with me while we drink wine and talk about how a life without art is not life at all. This year my delightful friend Erika Lawrence Gragg helped me paint. Below are the riveting images of how it turned out.

While buying paint for a client, I came across a great color called “Attic” from Porter’s Paints. To save money, I took the paint chip to Home Depot to have it matched. This taught me a very important lesson: trying to save money usually just makes you waste more money. The color produced by Home Depot’s color matching service looked like purple toothpaste and made me want to violently barf all over the place.

To solve the paint problem, I went to everybody’s favorite hardware store (Koontz Hardware in West Hollywood) and grabbed a few more pain samples:

I chose Benjamin Moore In Your Eyes (#715)

And Benjamin Moore White Rain (#708)

I really wanted In Your Eyes to work out just because the name is so ridiculous and amazing, but sadly it was a little too baby blue for me. As for White Rain, it skewed slightly too aqua and would have made my room look a swimming pool. And while I’ve always wanted to live in a swimming pool, I also wanted my room to retain some of its dignity. I ended up going with a grayer, more sophisticated Benjamin Moore color called Pale Smoke (#1584):

I liked Pale Smoke because it borders three of my favorite colors: blue, grey, and aqua. Like my mood, the color completely changes depending on how much sun is in the room.

Here are some pictures of what my boring, white walls looked like before I painted them.

After hours of toiling and getting paint all our faces, painting was complete.

I used a small trunk as a side table on my side of the bed.

I found this architectural drawing at the flea market a while back. The wire horse sculpture is from Emily.

This chair was purchased from a Goodwill in the desert for $10 and reupholstered in glamorous aqua linen for $80. I’m totally into the detail on the legs.

I found this little painting at an antique shop in Burbank. The Japanese print was a holiday gift from my mother.

I changed out the dark grey drapes for white ones. My room is so bright and sunny I thought dark, moody drapes seemed out of place.

This mirror from Ikea is kind of a ridiculous bargain. $129 and it’s enormous. Adds so much light and the illusion of more space.

I went to Long Beach Flea Market on Sunday and found this incredible sailboat. I’ve been wanting one for ages so it was a dream come true for me.

I put this painting over the bed but my boyfriend thought the color palette was too monochromatic with the rest of the room so I ended up changing it out.

A globe fills an awkward space where a plant used to live (until it died because there’s no direct sunlight over there).

If I paint any more rooms grey in my apartment I might have to rename the whole place 50 Shades of Grey.

The End,
Orlando