Our 1st visit to the faire was pretty pleasant. The offerings were similar to Alameda’s antique faire but much smaller. The more intimate size was also less intimidating and made it seem more manageable to check everything out before we got tired. Yes, it does seem we keep buying items for alcohol consumption. But hey! any cool bar requires time and efforts to cultivate.
Part of the fun/charm of moving in with a partner for the first time is the combing of your worldly possessions that, often, don’t match. Between the 2 of us, we managed to have 2 night stands and 2 dressers. Every one of them had its own style & color. I’ve wanted to do something about it for a long while now.
Finally, I decided to pickup 2 shades of blue paint in the same family so they will look cohesive, without being overly matchy.
-room before-
-night stands: before-
-night stands: after-
-Night stand #1 & #2 + Dresser #1 & #2-
A new feature in this apartment that I never had in any previous apartments was the separate bathroom (with tub and sink) and water closet (just the toilet). I was told it is a very “San Francisco” and “charming” characteristics.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I bring reading materials when I “do my business”. There’s got to be a place to set down the materials when you need to. However, with our small space, it needs to be something with small foot print.
SO, I’ve been on a search for that perfect little table. Finally, over the past weekend, I found it in a moving sale!
It was used outdoor with planters on top of it. There was quite a bit of rust, especially on the tray.
After cleaning & painting, ta-da!
I left the pole section the original color to provide a little contrast. Now we have a little “table” in the water closet! 
Our apartment was painted with a lot of cream wall colors & white trims through out. It’s nice and serene and makes white furniture disappear.
I have inherited a large white bookshelf from an old roommate years back. It’s a nice size and decently built but definitely showing its age. While brainstorming what color to paint it with by using what I already have, nice boyfriend suggested “grey”! Perfect. I have black, and I have light blue and white. Isn’t grey just black mixed with a lighter color?
So the great mixing process began. Hand mixing paint colors reminded me of mixing baking batter without recipe. You have your base of whatever already in the bowl. Then, you slowly pour in the additional ingredient. Too much, your cake won’t rise. Too little, you cake tastes funny. My mixing bowl looked like this:
Oh, forgot to mention that before any paint job, you need to prep your surface. That means sanding, wiping with damp towel, and taping the edges so you don’t paint over the area that you don’t want to paint. This is also my least favorite part of the painting. It’s time consuming, and I’m much more interested in taking my paint brush to the object.
I decided to go with grey on the exterior to the bookshelf while leaving the interior white so the color wheel that I am going to organize the books by will stand out. To be clear, I didn’t invent this method. I saw it on a HGTV show sometime and have been wanting to try it. Here is my top 3 reasons why I think it’s a good idea:
Adding a small detail to make it more interesting, I also painted the very bottom black. It kind of reminds me of the ‘exposed legs’ of couches/sofa/love seat.
After painting, I left the shelf to dry for hours. I touched up some of the backing with white paint I had because there were scratch marks. The colors weren’t really a match. Oh well… the books will color them.
Shelf finally dried. I sanded it with super fine steel wool for the finished look. Then the great arranging began. I arranged the books by colors first. Then within the piles of the same color, I divided them by shades. Having a color wheel image near by was pretty helpful.
Here is the finished look!
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