Hey dudes... guess what!?

We're getting close to Apartment Therapy day! Apparently, my house tour is set to be posted next week. (Woo woo!)

In the meantime, I have one sneak peek photo to show you, taken by the lovely Abby Cook (who shot our place for the feature). AND, it's a great picture to share because it really highlights one of my recent projects: bright door edging.

I was inspired to paint the edge of every door in our apartment after I saw the September 2001 issue of Martha Stewart Living. The mag featured this project among other easy ways to jazz up your doors and it seemed so simple, I couldn't wait to try it.

I did a different, complimentary or contrasting colour on every door. The guest room (shown above) has green accents, so I chose a bright acid green edge for that room. Our bathroom is dark chocolate brown, and I used a hot pink in there. In our dark blue bedroom, the door edge is now pumpkin orange, and in the dining room, it's teal.

You could use any acrylic paint for this project, and I would recommend you apply it with a plain old artist paint brush. Don't bother taping. The door itself will guide you, and if you slip up, just wipe away your mistake with a wet rag. Acrylic is very easy to work with.

In order to get a REALLY bright look, I went with some of the new colours/paints from the Mantegna line, purchased at Woolfit's in Toronto. (Any art store will have good paints. I went to Woolfit's because it's around the corner from my office.) You only need a little tube of any one colour to do each door, and you'll have paint left over.

_See the "Luminous Green" shown on the right of the top-most line of colours? That's what you see in the first picture above.

This is an EXTREMELY fast and easy project. I highly recommend you try it. When your doors are closed, you won't notice the change at all, but when they're open, you get that pop of colour and it's fun and happy. Think about it.

Okay. I know I've dawdled on this, but it's finally time to reveal my new(ish) dark bedroom. If you remember, I was hesitant to go dark at first, but it's now been several weeks since I completed the painting and I have to say... I love it.

Special thanks to everyone who encouraged me to go for it, especially Amy at ABCD Designs.

I know you want to see it, but let's not dive right in. Let's start with my inspiration: the peacock feather. I woke up one morning thinking of peacock feathers and that's where this whole thing started. At first, I wanted to paint the room green. But that seemed impractical, or less livable, so I decided on a deep blue, like the very centre of the feather's eye.

I chose Behr's "Night Shade" #740F-7. On the chip, it looks near-black, but on the walls, it's a lovely, deep blue with a forest green undertone. It looks different in different lights and at different hours of the day, so I feel like it's a living colour. Like it can breathe.

My walls are textured - very old and bumpy plaster - so I chose matte/flat 'paint+primer in one' for coverage that would hide imperfections.

Here's the before shot. (We lived with the room this way for about two years.)

When I committed to this makeover, the first thing I did was reorient the furniture. I moved the bed from the back wall to under the window. Now, when you walk into the room, you see the bed on your left and a straight path to the back wall on your right. Here is the reoriented furniture, before I started laying on the new paint:

Next, I got painting.

Working with a dark colour is emotionally daunting because initially, it looks like... crap. I was terrified after my first (patchy) pass, but after three solid coats, I felt a lot better. Next, I had to consider If I would paint the doors and trim.

I decided to paint everything (except the ceiling) because I wanted the finished room to feel calm. The dark colour made the white doors, baseboards and moldings pop, but I didn't want pop. Pop was the opposite of what I wanted. So on went the paint. (I even painted the light switch  and electrical plates.) The result is a completely uniform envelope. Very serene.

So... are you ready for the reveal? I'm not much of a photographer (as you know) so it was hard to get a shot that does the room justice, but here goes. This is a shot from the doorway:

Next, take a look at the view looking straight in from the hall (which you can compare with the similar before shot, above). You can see the painted doors and frames on the right. Don't mind the cables. Still haven't sorted those out. You can also see the way the sunlight on the wall makes the paint look brighter.

I love how the dark walls make everything feel special. Every piece of art, every object, stands out like a bright spot in a dark sea.

Next, take a look at our bedside tables. They are symmetrical, but not perfectly symmetrical. The paintings are from the late 1970s, and were originally sold by a local artist at the Canadian National Exhibition. The blue velvet drapes are from Value Village. The lamp is IKEA. The birds are a DIY makeover project I posted about recently, and the brass plant pots were inherited from my grandparents.

On Nate's side, you can see one of my Budai figures (Goodwill), a vintage marble elephant (probably a former book-end), a bit of my midcentury orange floor lamp ($5 at a UofT prof's estate sale) and Nate's weird little nose thingy that holds his glasses.

The back wall, which used to house the bed, now features my clothes-storage wardrobes.

On the smaller wardrobe, I've displayed my collection of hand-thrown pottery and unusual vessels. (Plus weird bits and bobs like ceramic birds and marble eggs.)

I've included hits of green (in the throw at the foot of the bed, for example, shown below), and in the plants, as well as some teal notes (in the Birk's boxes on top of the wardrobes) to stay with the peacock theme. As for the orange and rusty accents... that's just what I had on hand.

The best part is that both Nate and I are sleeping better. A cozy bedroom is good for that.

Anyway, there you have it. I went to the dark place and it welcomed me with open arms. The rest of our apartment (with the exception of our tiny bathroom, which I made over in chocolate) is near-white. And this is cliched, but the bedroom now feels, in contrast, like a little jewel. It's currently my favourite place in the house.

So if you're considering going dark, I say: do it. Be bold. It's so worth it.

I have decided to paint my bedroom dark. You weighed in and I listened and I decide to go for it. I have the colour all picked out. I'm going with Behr's "Night Shade" which, in practice looks like this:

No, not the colour on the left! The colour on the right! The DARK colour. (So dark.) (The image is from the Hostetler's blog.)

Oh man. I'm terrified.

Just to give you an idea of what it's going to look like, I'll show you a couple of things I've got already, like my IKEA furniture (from the Engen line - now defunct):

And here's a before shot of my bedding (or at least, some of my bedding) and accessories:

If all goes well, and I can get the room finished and dressed, I'll have a reveal for you next week. Cross fingers!

I'm no nationalist, but Happy Canada Day, nonetheless. Enjoy the long weekend, dudes and dudettes.

Red chinoiserie chairs. Room by Jennifer Dengel.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm into gold. Just look at all the gold spray painting I do. Gold coffee table, gold birds... GOLD! I love it.

I've never been a silver girl. For one thing, it makes me look sickly. My skin tone just works a lot better with warmer shades.

So woe was me during my formative years, when silver was all the rage and gold was considered tacky and disgusting. Some people still think it's tacky and disgusting. (Check out the comments on this post, for example. Gold-hater in attendance.)

But I don't care!

Not only do I love gold, but so does the design world. Gold is BACK, yo. And I am vindicated.

Sooooo with that in mind, here's some gold stuff that I love.

If this gold shell light fixture from Galerie De France wasn't $3,900, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Available here.

This $15 gold objet will be available at Chapters/Indigo in the fall. As seen on Seema Persaud's House and Home blog. 

This forest park table (gold tone, but actually iron) is in magazines all the time. I want one so much.

The "sheaf of wheat" table is a classic, in my opinion. My grandparents had some stuff like it. But alas, other relatives got there first. (Curse you, Dad!)

Finally, I've  long-admired this gold standing lamp by Masiero. So curvy!

Anyway. In case you haven't noticed, this post is about gold.

Gold! I'm into it.

I know you guys don't really like these colour posts (you never comment!) but I'm doing a new one anyway.

I'm a busy lady, okay? I can't be writing a whole bunch of new stuff every day, can I?

(Oh wait... that's blogging.)

Nevermind. Here are some pretty pictures.

Pomegranate textile from Fabric.com.

Sometimes, especially in the summer, I start craving all things white. I want white bedding, white slip-covered sofas, white walls. White white white.

Unfortunately for me, no matter what time of year it is, Nate isn't very keen on white. He thinks it's cold.

And maybe he's right. White can be cold. But it's hot as heck in Toronto and cold is what I crave. Stark, clean, utterly impractical (and yes, cold) white.

WHITE! Here's some inspiration for a sweltering day:

If you or anyone you know owns this image, please email me.

If you or anyone you know owns this image, please email me.

If you or anyone you know owns this image, please email me.

Hey yo. So even though I live in a rental, and even though I've already invested way too much into the upkeep of this apartment, and even though my interior doors were perfectly fine as they were... I got my hands on a free gallon of paint...

so I decided to paint the doors.

I painted all of my interior apartment doors Flint AF-560 by Benjamin Moore. I chose a low VOC pearl finish.

Before:

After:

Here are a couple more pics, to give you a bit more perspective:

I think I like it. I'm still not used to the change. Every time I enter the hallway, I feel startled, but I'm beginning to get used to it.

What do you think? Good change?

Now that the doors are painted, the next thing I need to do is frost the back door window. There's a curtain up now, but with the dark paint, it doesn't work. I tried spraying it with a frosting product, but it didn't work at all. Horribly patchy. I had to scrape it all off with a putty knife. Terrible. I'm going to give it another go with a vinyl decal instead. I just have to find the right size.

Anyway. Dark doors. Light days. I feel good about it.

Blue Eyed Grass is my absolute favourite thing about springtime in Toronto. My absolute favourite thing. I love how it seems to appear out of nowhere. How you can leave your house in the morning with a lawn of nothing but green shoots and mud, and when you return home, it's brimming over with blue. I'm surprised by it every single year. And it always makes me happy.

Hope y'all are having a nice holiday weekend. I spent it walking around the city, hunting for Blue Eyed Grass. I wasn't disappointed.

In honour of St. Patrick's Day. (I'm like, 1/16th Irish, you know.)

Creative commons licensed image by Abbey Hendrickson from Flickr.

Creative commons licensed image by Kman99 from Flickr.