Back splash

One of the first things we knew we wanted to update was the back splash. It just felt so dated. After further investigation Mike figured out that they had actually taken the different tiles that they had used all over the house and made this design. I have to give them credit for their creativity but it had to go. 






I had the idea right away that we could probably spray paint them to look like metal with that new spray paint from Kiltz. But I was not sure the paint would actually stick and that we wouldn't end up with a mess. We also considered using a Brummel tool and removing the tile and replacing it with something of similar size. The spray paint method sounded a lot easier. We had some extra tile in the garage so I did a test on it and found that using spray paint alone, once it cured (dried  for a few days) was not easy to scratch but if you worked on it a bit it did scratch. But, if you sprayed a primer then the metal spray paint it was a very hard surface.
So I got to work. I first taped off the square to be painted.

Then I taped a large garbage sack up to avoid any over spray. I put one coat of primer on, let it dry for at least 10 min. Then put one coat of spray paint, let it dry for 10 min and then followed up with a second coat of spray paint.
And here is the final product

BEFORE

                                                          AFTER

 

Linked to Thrifty Decor Chick

Paint

 I am FINALLY done painting the main areas of the downstairs and the hallway upstairs. Man it took forever. I was trying to get it done before we moved in but with our crazy schedule I was not able to pull it off. Then when our pipes froze the day after we moved in, it put things are the back burner for a few days.
Those tall ceilings are a big job to tackle.  The color is only a few shades darker then what was here before but I am happy with the color. I always start off saying I am going real dark but in the end I choose a lighter color. I really like to live in light spaces. I love when the sun shines in. The way our home sits it does not get a ton of sunlight and there are no windows in the kitchen so I had to be careful not to make it feel like a cave.

I love the clean look of fresh paint. Plus getting rid of that flat paint was a must.

Paint

Am I the only person in the world who has such a hard time choosing a paint color? I am known as the girl who has 10-12 samples of tans. Call me sometime and you can borrow them too. They are great for narrowing down colors. So I always tell suggest to people that they definitely need to get a quart of the color before they dive into a gallon or worse yet the 5 gallon. You have to put the color on your wall to really get a feel for it. So before I do a repaint my walls always look something like this.

But I learned it is a better to be safe then sorry. Many times I thought I had chosen the perfect color just to bring it home and hate it.

There has got to be 30,000 different shades of tan/beige, basic house colors, out there so why is it I can never find one? Once again in the end I had a color custom mixed for me. Did you know your paint store can do 1/2 strength of a color? They can even do double strength.  I learned that Home Depot is not aware that they can actually do this but actually there little computers have it all figures out for them. I did end up training 3 different salesmen in the paint department how to do this once the first guy finally admitted that they could do it ( after he had told me they could not). In the end I went with 1 1/2 strength Mushroom bisque.