Decorating the Sick Ward (or, “What I Did While Staring at the Walls for Four Days”)

Hi there. It’s been a while. I’m sorry.

I’ve been sick. Bronchitis, sinus infection, fever. Good stuff. And my daughter had it, too. And now my son has it.

Yeah, I wouldn’t touch us with a ten-foot pole, either.

Given my DIY and rearranging furniture/decor tendencies, you know I couldn’t leave well enough alone while I was sick in bed.  Oh no. As I was lying in bed, I would look around the room and notice the paint chipped off the window sill. I thought about how the guest room would look better with trim (I was banished to the guest room). I thought about what to do with the old window/cabinet door left over from when I tore out the corner cabinet in our kitchen.

That’s right. Some people watch marathons of Duck Dynasty; I dream of projects. (Oh, and I developed a healthy addiction to HGTV’s Love It or List It … although, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why Hillary doesn’t tell the homeowners at the beginning that there might be structural issues given that the houses are all old…but I digress.)

One of the  projects that has been on my list for some time is what to do with the old door of the cabinet from the breakfast room when I did this tear-out. It looks more like a window that got turned into a cabinet door. It feels like one, too – it is heavy! Anyway, it’s been sitting in my garage for about three years and I finally figured it out. It took fever and a hacking cough, but here is its new home, in our dining room:

Isn’t she pretty?

All she needed was some cleaning up and voila! I love her there. (Why is a door a she? Don’t know. Probably the cough medicine talking.)

P.S. Ballard Designs has a mirror that looks a lot like the window/door here.

What was there before, you may ask? (You were thinking that, right?)  Here’s the before:

I love that mirror, but I’ve always thought it was a little small for that space. I wanted something round (or with rounded edges) there, though, because of all the sharp edges and lines of the buffet and the cabinet on the opposite wall (not shown). The window/door worked perfectly.

And where did I put the mirror?

In its new home, where the scale is much better.

(Don’t worry – the bright flower painting that was there will find a new location in our home soon. I love it.)

And that’s not all!

I’ve been pondering what color to paint our living room.  In this post, I talk about how I’m a bit over the beige of it all. So, since I couldn’t go to the paint store, I did my own paint shopping, with a photo editor (PicMonkey).

I started with a recent picture of our living room.  Then I added the color that I got in the oops bin at the Benjamin Moore store – which is a gorgeous bluish green color. I really want to paint the backs of our built-ins this color, but I’m not sure I have the guts to do it.  (More on that another day.)

Then I added colors to the living room walls until I found one that that I thought might work. And wasn’t beige.

Here’s the result:

See – homemade paint chips! Without leaving the six layers of blankets I was under!

As it turns out, we actually already own some of that yellow paint. Consistent person that I am, that’s pretty much the color I painted our kitchen before our kitchen remodel (Benjamin Moore “Jicama”). Go figure.

So, I got a lot done while I was sick! OK, so I moved the dining room mirror and stuff around after my fever broke, but all the planning got done while lying in bed. You gotta have a plan, after all.

Thanks for stopping by and for all of the well wishes when I was sick.