Sunday, February 15, 2009

More design questions

Since the upstairs is a mess (not to mention the kitchen), I am making it into an opportunity to get some more painting done. Several months ago we had the majority of the interior painted:

Here you can see the 2 main colors we've chosen for the living spaces: the darker shade on the left wall and the lighter shade in the TV cove. Pay no attention to the hole in the ceiling, or the hideous vertical blinds on the sliding glass door.

We didn't paint the bedrooms or the girls' bathroom, in hopes that we could save up and get it done at a later date. It's later, and now that Kate's room and the bathroom are semi-destructed, I want to get the rest of the house done. Here's my dilemma: I have no idea how long we will be here and therefore it's probably best to paint in tones that will maximize our resale potential. Kate has a red bed and will hopefully be getting some new black-brown dressers soon. More on that in a moment. Claire will be permanently sharing Kate's room with her as soon as the mess is cleaned up, and the baby will have its own room.

Question 1: what color do I paint Kate's room? I am leaning towards the lighter shade that is in the TV cove because she already has some bright colored furniture, and also her room is on the northish side of the house and I don't want to go too dark.

Question 2: what color do I paint the nursery? I have never been a fan of baby blue, so I won't do that unless one of you can come up with an extremely compelling reason to do so. We don't know the gender of the baby, so I also don't want to go with pink (this would potentially create resale issues later, anyway). Do I go with the same light color?

Our room is above the family room, and I am pretty sure I am going with the darker color in there, since we get a lot of sun, and I want some variety upstairs. I think we'll do a darker brown accent wall (suede if the painters can create the look without significant cost to our retirement fund) in Fawn's Leap, on the wall where our headboard is.

Isn't this a nice picture? Lots going on.

Question 3: has anyone recently purchased furniture from Ikea? I found some decent looking furniture that I think will go with Kate's room, and the price is good. My other option is Target furniture and I think they have a crap selection right now. I just can't justify spending a gazillion dollars on dressers and such for pre-schoolers. I am leaning towards 2 dressers and a nightstand, since each child likely needs a dresser and Claire will be losing hers to the baby soon. There is no Ikea near us, so I have to buy sight-unseen. Please help!

5 comments:

Katie said...

I think carrying either of those family room colors upstairs to the girls' room is a great idea. I am a fan of having lots of paint unity in a house when trying to sell it (because I tend to buy houses that have that!)

Love the idea for your suede wall.

How about my all time fave paint color for the baby's room? Restoration Hardware's "silver sage"? It is a very neutral greenish/greyish/slight blueish. VERY beautiful. Very neutral. Very gender neutral. Behr has a similar color called "Rhino" at Home Depot. Any baby stuff would go with it and yet it isn't "babyish" in the least!

As for the IKEA furniture, I love the look of it (and the price), but for what it is worth, I have heard horror stories about trying to assemble it (it will come in ten million pieces) and it likely won't survive your next move. John is so sick of me buying crap furniture that he has declared we will no longer buy anything we have to assemble. But, that is difficult when talking about kids' rooms. Because you KNOW they will likely destroy it anyway.....

That wasn't very helpful, was it?

Jen said...

Katie - you were very helpful! I am going to go find my RH catalog and find out if they have rooms painted in that Sage color - I want to see more than the online swatch. And you and John are so right about moving and furniture! Ugh. I hate it when it's destroyed. Sigh. I have never bought anything more than a chest from them (which I did have to finish and assemble. But, I do still have it, more than 10 years later...).

Andrea_Ben said...

I think a greenish color would be my vote too.

Ikea - it is hit and miss. We have LOTS of ikea items and many pieces of furniture (our bedroom is all IKEA). That line is nice. We have looked at it for our room. It is one of the nicer dresser lines. I would stear clear of their laminates, but their solid wood stuff is really nice.

Carrie S said...

We now have an Ikea very close and I love it. If you're going to compare Ikea and Target on price and quality I don't think there's a comparison - Ikea wins hands down. I know you have to assemble everything from there, but at least you see what you're getting. It might not survive a move, but for the savings, I think it's a great investment for a kids' room. Depending on what kind of drawing, painting, scratching, stickering gets done to the furniture in the kids' rooms, you might be glad that it doesn't survive a move and have an excuse to then invest in higher quality for older children who will better care for it. Just an idea!

Elizabeth said...

Who says you're not nesting? LIAR.