Friday, April 4, 2008

my little (green and cheap) remodel

My big plans for this weekend include a quick and cheap freshening up of my studio before the mad rush of the summer wedding season begins. I'm dreaming of a new fun color on the walls, and something soft and drapey on the ceiling, and a great big new bulletin board above my workbench to pin inspiration to.


My remodel inspiration is this sky blue and chocolate paper (which is gorgeous in person and pale/washed out in this picture!), that I found a couple years ago at Old Navy of all places! I'll use it to cover my bulletin board, and maybe the back of some shelves (one of my favorite decorating tricks!)

With my grand plans swirling around my head, I took off for my local Benjamin Moore paint store a few days ago, thinking I'd check out their new Aura paint that is supposed to be super eco-friendly and have a fancy formula that is quick drying, self-priming, and have a cool color-lock techonology. But once I got to the store, I got totally side-tracked by the great big shelf of homeless paint cans. It seems that a lot of people order paint over the phone and never come pick it up. Or one can out of several that are made up in one color doesn't quite match. Or people change their minds. I don't know, but there were a lot of pre-mixed cans that seemed eventually headed for the landfil unless someone took them home.

So, I dug around for a few mintues, and found the most beautiful shade of blue that perfectly matches my paper. And it has the perfect "pearl" sheen that I was looking for. And it only cost $5.99 (!) instead of $37.99 since I was rescuing it.

And then yesterday morning, Ideal Bite's daily green tip was about eco-friendly paints, and they stated that "one gallon of conventional paint that's not properly disposed of can seep into the earth and pollute 250,000 gal of drinking water". So the next time you are feeling adventuress and not too picky about your paint color, check out that shelf of homeless cans that seems to be at every paint shop. You may just find a perfect match!

I'll let you know how the studio freshening goes!

No comments: