COLORS: My mother-in-law was asking me all sorts of questions about colors when she and Don were here over Easter weekend, meaning I had to actually make some decisions about what colors I want in the house! Well, I had done some thinking before, but I hadn't settled on anything yet. And I'm not quite sure I'm settled on this yet, but for now, here is the inspiration for the color palette for the house:
I want "prairie colors" as color scheme for the house. I had started with wanting colors from Lora Schaunaman's "Savo Summer" watercolor, then after looking at it more closely, I realized those colors are too pastel for me. I checked out this book based on the lovely cover (though it is a very good book otherwise -- I would recommend that high schoolers read this so they understand the land they grew up on).After trying to pull specific colors from this, however, I am realizing that it might not be exactly what I want. The colors playing off of one another look good, but on their own, they might look like odd blocks of color. Sigh. I guess I'll have to just trek off to the paint store and see if I can find a close color scheme that works.
The plan is to have the high part of the ceiling in some shade that makes you think of the prairie sky -- that's likely blue, but it might not be. Then, over that, as a low border, I was looking into wall decals of prairie plants. I haven't found anything just perfect yet, though this is the closest I've found so far:
CEILINGS: Pretty soon we need to make a decision about what kind of ceilings we want in the living room and kitchen (the rooms on the north side of the house will just have drywall, textured ceilings). I had wanted ceiling tins, and I contacted Jim and Kay Dumire, since I was pretty sure they had ceiling tins. Well, they did, but they have a LOT of work embedded into them -- Jim took them off the ceiling of an old church, and had to remove about 4o nails per 2-foot-by-2-foot tin, while looking up and dodging falling dirt that was behind the tins. So the charge is would be $20 per tin. NOT in our price range, unfortunately.
We've gotten some other suggestions -- my sister suggested beadboard, and another friend suggested getting ceiling tiles that look like tins and painting them with a metal paint, which gives the same ceiling tin effect -- but I have this crazy idea that would recycle at the same time. Keep an open mind and consider ...
... the old tin they took off the granary roof! Dave thinks I'm kinda crazy, and maybe I am, but I think, if we're trying to preserve that "old granary" look, this might be pretty cool.We'd have to put up a plywood backer, I think, so it wouldn't be much cheaper than drywall. But it would definitely be more interesting.
Mari thinks it might be OK above the kitchen, but that it would look too industrial above the living room. She might be right. We could try it in the kitchen area first and see what we think.
All right, folks, time to vote! What do you think of my tin ceiling idea? Leave a comment!
...Dave's been busy with other things, namely getting the garden ready, but he's also managed to do quite a bit of drywalling. Sofia's room is nearly done. It looks a little funny, actually, with that one corner of the downstairs nearly done and the rest of the downstairs walls' innards bare -- like that corner is a stage set in an old warehouse or something. (Sorry, no photos of that. I'll get some more soon.)
...And I'll leave you with this nice photo of Sofia and Grandpa, taken when Don and Mary were here over Easter. The astonishing thing to note here is that it's taken at least a mile from the house, and Sofia had walked all the way on her own two legs! She was carried a short distance on the way back, but she did most of that on her own, too. She's a good little walker.... And Sofia is learning how to spell. She's got two words down now (in addition to SOFIA, which she's known for a long time): BABY and STOP. Not because we keep telling baby to stop (though we've been doing that a fair amount too) but because she kept seeing stop signs and asked about them, and because we had a box with the word baby on the table for a while. Most of this is her own instigation. She just likes letters.
We figure she's going to be bored in kindergarten.
4 comments:
I had wanted to do a theme very similar to that using Iowa landscape as my inspiration, using sky colors for the walls and pulling in the ground textures with the room materials (wispy white sheer curtains, rich textural materials like velvets and corduroy, woven rattan materials, bare woods and old barn wood, earth-tone carpets/rugs, etc). I was wanting to use native grass in small places instead of wallpaper and lots of nature in frames. That's how I wanted to do the master bedroom, but we moved before I could see things through. I think the metal in the kitchen could be interesting if you did it right... I could see in used as a back-splash though or paneling for a lower wall.
Two things to consider with the tin on the ceiling: 1) it's going to be a bit dark, unless you paint it a light color and 2) spiders will web like crazy between the ribs. The latter would dissuade me very quickly, I'm afraid - we have enough trouble keeping up with the spider webs as it is, without encouraging them with additional habitat!
I prefer ceilings that do not draw attention to themselves. How about a very neutral - to the point of invisibility - color on plain drywall for the downstairs ceilings and then use light fixtures and other comparatively easily replaced items to create texture and visual effects? The kitchen especially would seem to offer an abundance of potential for interesting sight lines using various storage rack configurations and fixtures.
I might use the tin on the kitchen ceiling, but that would be it. But as Karen said, it may encourage beasties/spiders.
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