Home improvements

We are in the process of buying our second home. I daydream daily of paint colors and furniture arranging. I adore this process of moving...the decorating! Our first house was in Des Moines, WA. And when we moved in there was a lot of work to be done. The entire downstairs was painted this horrible pea soup green and the fireplace was painted a high gloss white. It looked bad but I knew we could fix it with a little paint. Buying a home makes such a dent in your savings that you barely have enough money to start the projects you want to tackle. Painting is the cheapest face lift you can give to a room. So I started there. The first picture was taken at our home inspection with the seller's furniture and decor still in the house. We quickly got rid of the pea soup green and replaced it with a off white and then I tackled the fireplace. I looked into having the paint removed so we would have the original stone work but it was really expensive and would mean we would have to be out of the house for a few weeks as the process would be toxic to breathe. With a toddler and a brand new baby in my arms that wasn't a possibility. So I grabbed some paint and with my theatre background I used the knowledge I gained in college from the many hours painting sets. I used 4 colors, all were left over from paint we used to paint different rooms in our house. Using a dry brush dab a very small amount of paint on the brush, you want it to remain dry, and tap on the surface in a random order. Let each color dry before applying the next color. There is no real science to it, just use your imagination. I've seen this technique used on many types of projects from door frames to decorative pots to a fireplace :)