The Long Awaited Painted Tray Post

I know I promised this post as part of DIY week about a month and a half ago, but I got a little lazy after our spontaneous D.C. mini vacation. That doesn't mean I didn't do it.

The reason I never told the story of the painted tray is it didn't turn out very well. It didn't turn out at all. I screwed it up and never finished it. But we're all about honesty over here at the Woodward Place, so I decided to share what went down:

The tray in question is a terra cotta potting tray that I bought at Michaels a long, long time ago. I spray painted it white and used it to corral candles and keep melted wax off our counters. It was perfect. Then it was boring.

"How hard could it be to paint a tray," I thought. "I could always stencil it," I thought.

Apparently, I am completely unaware of how expensive stencils are. Since I couldn't find one I loved and didn't want to spend a ton on one I'm just okay with, I decided that was out.

Plan B was to grid out the tray and paint a simple, albeit handmade chevron pattern.

Step 1. Draw grid.

Alright. That wasn't so hard.

Step 2. Attach the lines on a diagonal.

So far, so good. Cool and full of character. Just gotta keep this up.

Step 3. Because that looks awesome, adding vertical lines to make it more of a geometric grid would be more awesome. Right?

Mmmm, not so much. But I'm committed now.

Step 4. Be brave, keep going.

Oh, wrong choice. That only emphasizes the imperfections.

Step 5: Abandon all steps and try to salvage this project.

Since I also couldn't figure out how to finish the edges and I thought, "maybe a border will hide the ugly parts." After taping it off and hoping for a relatively smooth line, this is what I got:

Here's the second time I thought, "maybe a border will hide the ugly parts." Feeling like a genius, I broke out my gold Sharpie and...

Smoother, but not opaque. Guess it's time for a new gold Sharpie. And that's as far as I got.

I'm not crazy about any part of this, so I'm not rushing to finish it. Clearly my approach of abandoning my original plan did not work out.

This was supposed to be an easy, afternoon, de-stressing DIY project but somehow it turned out as a globby, gloopy mess. As I see it, I have two options: Spray paint the whole thing (maybe not white again) or keep tinkering and hoping for artistic genius. At this point, I think any "artistic genius" is past and all that's in the future "tried to hard."

So, does any one have any ideas on what I should do next to make the painted tray interesting and not amateur hour?

House Update: Kitchen Counters and Paint

I know many of you couldn't care less about the ins and outs of home construction and mainly appreciate the glamor shots. If you're thinking, "yep, that's me," today is your lucky day.

To start, our homes exterior colors are now as they will be when we move in (the door isn't completely painted yet).

The Hardie Board color is Woodstock Brown and the shutters and door are a dark bluish grey. One of the first projects I want to tackle is repainting our front door (I know, I know...) a dark, rusty red. I think it will be a great compliment to the fall and winter decorating I'll get to start as soon as we move in, plus it will really brighten up the front porch. Repainting the door red will be one of the first things I submit to the HOA for approval along with fencing in the back yard.

Inside, we were surprised to see our counters have already been installed!

No, our counters don't have white splotches and they're not super dusty; for right now they have a layer of cellophane to protect from all the potential house building dangers. Once that's removed our counters will look simple black from far away. Upon closer look, the counters have light gold flecks in them, perfectly tying them to the off-white cabinets. They offer the much needed darkness against the very light cabinets and the soon-to-be-installed white subway tile.

 

One of the best things about this counter is they were standard, aka free! Wish I could say the same for the cabinets...

Our counters were also installed in both our upstairs bathrooms:

We chose the simple white counters to match the white subway tile that is to be installed in the master bathroom.  For the sake of consistency, we chose to run the same colors through the guest bathroom as well.

They've also got the first round of painting done; that's probably why my pictures finally look light and bright and not like they were taken in a cave. Here's a good shot of the paint, as well as the window trim I bragged about in the last post:

Our builder, Standard Pacific, won't paint the walls colors we chose so every wall in the house, including our ceilings, will be this light tan when we move in; this is not a problem for me as I love painting. I do plan on painting all our ceilings white and eventually adding crown molding throughout. The only area I'm not psyched about is over the stairs, but everywhere else I am more than game.

Every time I visit I fall a little bit more in love with our house; it's at the point now where I think Boone is a little jealous of my house baby.

House Update: Cabinets and Window Trim

They say kitchens and baths are what sell a house. While that's only partly true for us, it is one of the things I've been waiting for most eagerly. Not only do cabinets take our house from being a collection of empty rooms to a house that is almost ready to be inhabited, they were our biggest splurge when building the house. 

I found out our cabinets had been installed on Thursday afternoon but I couldn't go inside because they were painting. Because we worked all day Friday and then had our couples Barre class, we didn't get to go check our kitchen out until Saturday evening. But it was definitely worth the wait:

Everything is still covered in plastic because they still have a couple coats of paint to go.

We also got our bathroom cabinets.

Both our master bath and our hall bath have these dark wood cabinets. They are the standard [read: free] cabinets that are included in the base price of our house. Since we splurged on the off-white kitchen cabinets, we decided we needed to save a little in the bathroom.

The sample we were shown was much lighter; a medium cherry color. I liked it enough, but was secretly wishing for something espresso colored. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see an almost espresso color cabinet installed in our bathrooms.

I also love the row of drawers between the two cabinets. I don't remember that from the model, but I don't think I paid to much attention to the bathroom cabinet layout. This will help keep under our sinks two, well-defined his-and-hers areas versus one large cavern.

Another notable change from this trip is our window trim has been installed.

The window trim was another option. I asked about the price of this on day one because I knew that was a non-negotiable; I kind of hate how all new houses are cutting corners by leaving the windows un-trimmed. To me, this little detail gives our house a sense of "my owners care enough to finish me right." It also seems to make our house feel like it's been there for years because so few new houses have them. Seeing them in, I'd say definitely worth the $1,300.

If you're wondering what Pat's looking at in that picture, it's our garage being built. Can't believe the crew was still working at 7:30 on a Saturday night.

Our interior doors were also installed, but the only pic I have is of the one in the pantry, visible in the shot of the kitchen cabinets. The upstairs temporary railing has been removed, so I expect the permanent railing will be going in shortly.

I'm not really sure what will take another two months to finish, but I'm on the edge of my seat to see what's next.