ta daaa 2!

Now for the rest of the d-day apartment revamp pictures!

When I moved into my apartment, we quickly changed things up a bit from the three guys who lived there previously. They had white walls, a white couch, a recliner (that was pretty close to white) and a picture of University of Virigina's football stadium hanging on the wall. The first thing I did was paint. It's such a quick and (relatively) easy alternative for sprucing up a room stat. For some reason I chose a dark satin navy color, which I never fully loved, but I did like it better than the drab off-white walls that were already there.

The first thing Katherine and I did in our revamp, was cover up the dark blue wall. We had another color in mind, but decided to save ourselves some trouble later on in the day and go ahead and prime the wall with a nice white coat. Turns out, this was the best decision we could have made. It made our afternoon painting a breeze.

We quickly noticed that the room suddenly took on a completely different look!! Even if we had done nothing else to the room, it would have been a drastic change. But we couldn't stop there - look at the excitement on Kat's face to paint!

Next, we did some spray painting while the white base layer was drying. In case you've never thought of this, finding a spot to spray paint in New York City is a pretty difficult task. Especially when it's raining outside. Katherine and I finally decided on our trash room downstairs (which has NO ventilation whatsoever). We propped our table legs & top on the trash cans in order to avoid getting spray paint on the floor. Then we sprayed as long as we could possibly stand it - while the other wafted as much fresh air in as possible - and then we would switch. Painting two small tables seemed small and manageable at first, but this was actually one of the most difficult tasks of the day. Also, not alerting our neighbors to our project while subjecting them to harsh fumes inadvertently was a task in itself! But, you can see in the bottom left photo below, we got them done! And we now have two beautiful polished metallic nickel tables that were originally yellow and only $7.99 at Ikea!

And now...the beauty! Margaret (my fashion designer roommate) informed me that coral is the hot color this year. But I would have loved it and chosen it anyway. I saw this color at a former employers office, and fell in love. We chose a color from the Benjamin Moore Color Preview series, then tweaked it a little by adding 25% white. It looks a little pinker in the pictures, but it is the perfect shade of coral in person.

And ta daa: the finished product!! We took down the borders around our chalkboard (they were bright purple before), we got new pillows, swapped the two couches, hung new pictures and cleaned off our 1 million issues of People, Glamour and NY Mag on our coffee table. There are still a few finishing touches to do, but it makes for a nice change in the meantime!

 

...beacuase who wouldn't want a book called "Snog: A Puppy's Guide to Love" with adorable puppies on their coffee table?!

Now that our apartment has had the majority of its face lift completed, hopefully we will continue pulling it together piece by piece! But for now, I'm happy with the new look.