Blueprint Lighting Glow Up

Thank you to Blueprint Lighting for sponsoring this post and providing the light fixture for this space.

It’s truly hard to say what the biggest transformation in this space was since every single element made such an impact, but updating light fixtures not only replaced an ugly element with something stunning, but also vastly improved the brightness in a room that was previously pretty dark.

The original “boob light” flushmount fixture was ugly, sure, but it also did not do enough in terms of lighting the kitchen. This kitchen only has a north facing window, which means in the overcast winter days, it was not lighting the space adequately.

The ceilings in this room aren’t high enough for much more than a flushmount, so I knew I’d have to replace it with something at least semi-flushmount at most, and when I found Blueprint Lighting’s Lucienne flushmount I immediately knew it’d be perfect!

They sent over a whole set of finish samples, which made it even harder to pick because there are so many color and finish options! I almost went with the Malachite or Denmark colors to match the cabinet color, but ultimately I decided to go with the brushed brass to match the other brass elements in the room.

It’s legitimately one of the most beautiful light fixtures I’ve ever installed and now I’m jealous that it’s in my brother’s kitchen, not my own, thought to be honest, I do have my eye on some of their chandeliers for my kitchen. Now that my ceiling is painted black, a light fixture would really pop against the dark ceiling!

What's in my Mural Kit

Having an easily transportable mural kit makes traveling for murals so much easier. I ended up using an old laundry tote to bring my mural stuff on site, which I actually like so much more than something like an Ikea tote because it has a rigid wire around the top to hold the bag open, I like being able to see everything in there and not have the sides flop in. The fabric is also somewhat water-resistant and wipeable on the inside which is nice when you’re hauling around paint that sometimes spills.

Since my murals are usually multi-colored, I like to have plastic wrap with me to wrap up the brushes that are painty but not done being used yet.

I keep a rope and picture nails on hand for making circles or arches, and a level for making straight lines. I also have a few different kinds of painter's tape depending on the wall texture (multisurface, delicate surface, etc).

A lot of the time I’ll dip my brush right into the paint can to avoid having to pour paint, but that’s not always convenient, so having easy to hold paint buckets is also a great to keep in your kit.

My go-to brushes are Wooster Short Cuts brushes. I love these with their little rubber handle— my hand never feels crampy or sore after using these brushes all day. I can usually get almost all areas with just this brush, but sometimes I end up with small areas that need a tiny artist/craft brush, so I also keep some of those with me as well.

Mess ups and spills are inevitable, so I love to keep baby wipes and some rags with me to quickly wipe up any mistakes. Baby wipes are clutch, I highly recommend keeping some with you for painting projects, even if you’re not doing a mural.

And for finishing up, I like to have a nice eraser to get rid of any stray pencil lines that didn’t get painted over!

Short Cuts Paint Brushes | Small Craft Brushes | Rope | Painters Tape | Carpenter’s pencils | Baby Wipes | Plastic Wrap | Paint can opener | Hammer | Paint buckets | Level | Picture Nails | Rags | Eraser | Laundry Tote

I hope that was helpful! I’m sure my mural kit will change as I do more and more murals, but for now this is my core kit. It’s easy to throw in my truck and carry with me to the mural site. If you do murals or just paint a lot do you have any other items you keep with you?

Kitchen Mural Reveal

After I built out this laundry room in the awkward corner of our kitchen, I knew the wall wanted to have some kind of statement on it. But dang did it take forever to figure out what that statement was going to be. This design was actually inspired by a tile design where each square tile had a quarter circle on it, when meant you could completely customize the design. So I pulled a pic of this spot into photoshop and played around with quarter circles until I landed on something that felt good.

But my favorite element came later. I had been seeing this orange color around and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into the house. My original plan was for the french doors to be painted black, but then a bell went off in my head and I knew they had to be orange. I grabbed a paint chip (which ended up being the exact same color as Home Depot’s signature orange, haha) and bought a little paint sample (a paint sample size is usually enough to paint a door— and they’re only a couple bucks!). A few hours later the doors were orange and it MADE the space.

It’s so wild to look at the before pic and see that sad corner with the laundry closet. The space planning in this house by whoever built it is down right bananas, folks. Like… was that supposed to be a breakfast nook? It didn’t feel big enough for a table there, but it’s still a lot of square feet of wasted space. Now we have a laundry room with added cabinetry for storage, a more defined rear entry area for dropping keys, coats, etc, and they functionality and flow through the space isn’t impacted whatsoever.

Now… I just have to finish the final details on the inside of the laundry room…

DIY Painted Faux Tile Backsplash

My ultimate plan for our kitchen backsplash involves a gorgeous black zellige tile, but I knew that it would be a while until we got that tile project underway. In the meantime, I decided to have fun with a hand-painted backsplash that gave the effect of a faux tile look. I absolutely love how much depth the dark backsplash adds to the space!

Hand painting isn’t for everyone and there are other affordable but less tedious and time-consuming ways to upgrade your backsplash, like stick-on tiles, removable wallpaper, and paint stencils. You can even get a stencil that mimics this hexagon design!

For my process, I used chalk to trace the hexagon shape onto the wall, then used a straightedge to draw the lines inside the hexagons with chalk. Once that template was on the wall, I used a small craft paintbrush to paint interior latex paint along those lines. Definitely tedious! But I did this in the midst of the post-election madness and a tedious project that needed a lot of focus what a pleasant distraction, haha.

Eclectic Modern Bathroom Remodel

This before and after still rocks my world a little bit. Truth be told it’s not a true after, there are still projects to be done in here. but, I mean, come on. Are these two rooms even the same?! It’s wild. The layout for this room is strange. I’m really not entirely sure what the person who laid out this space was thinking, but gutting it and rearranging just wasn’t in the budget.

We kept pretty much everything and just reworked it. The vanity is the same, but I put new slab doors on, sanded down the original vanity to its natural oak and then whitewashed it to keep the modern light look that the raw wood had (putting poly over the raw wood would have turned it back into the ugly orangey color of the original bathroom— no thanks!).

For whatever reason, the old vanity had a strange vacant cavity next to the cabinet under the counter. What went there? Who knows. Probably just cobwebs and grime. I added some open shelves there which are perfect for holding baskets with hair product (curly girls represent!), and the bottom shelf is the perfect spot for extra TP rolls.

The large linen closet storage on the left side of the vanity got a slatted upgrade, I just refinished the existing door and trim the same way I did the vanity cabinet, and then added oak slats.

This bathroom is not hurting for storage so the massive medicine cabinet mirror was absolutely not necessary. a streamlined simple brass mirror took it’s place, and the sorely dated vanity lighting got a midcentury modern upgrade.

Dingy white walls be gone! I did a textured wall treatment, giving the walls a plaster-y look to remove the dated orange peel texture, and then painted a moody blue-ish green-ish teal, Valspar’s Everglade Deck.

Obviously the showstopper of the space is the stunning cement hex tile from Riad Tile. I’ve eyed so many styles from Riad for years and this large wall behind the vanity basically begged for a statement wall. I’m absolutely obsessed with how this tile completely transforms the room.

And to replace the old formica counter, we did a poured concrete counter! This whole space was a DIY update, and we did everything we could to do budget friendly updates, use what existing elements we could, and worked around the layout so we could create the maximum update for minimum cost. I did pretty much everything myself, except the poured concrete counter and the floor tile, which my husband took on (though I did cut the floor tile, so we’ll call that one a joint effort).

If you want to see the before images, scroll down!

We’ve got some other big projects in the works so this space is basically on hold for now. It has an ugly ivory fiberglass tub/surround which desperately needs to be replaced, but it works fine and I can hide it behind a pretty shower curtain, so for the time being it stays. A pretty white tub and tiled surround will happen someday! In the meantime, I just bask in the glow of the tile wall.

tile c/o Riad Tile