reduced=improved

Will and I recently began our third year in apartment 3D. For the first two years, our second bedroom that serves as an office was a white box. I never really did anything in terms of decorating  besides put in furniture, and honestly didn't have any plans to. That was until yesterday.
I went to Lowe's for bedroom paint samples (more on that later) and happened to discover a section of discounted paints. The discounted paint section is filled with all sorts of paints that were mixed and then people decided they didn't like for whatever reason. While all I had to go on was a smudge on top of the can, one was a perfectly good quart of bluish green that immediately caught my eye.

It was a color I love, and it was only $2.50! Even though I didn't have anything in mind for it specifically, I knew that I could find something!

Once I got home I started brainstorming projects that could use pretty blue paint, and quickly decided on the office, aka the white box I've done nothing with for the past two years. Some people might think I'm crazy for painting when we'll be moving in a year or less, but I think it's totally worth a few hours of work (between putting it up and priming it over when we move)it to enjoy a space more for 300+days. I didn't have enough paint for the whole room, so I thought maybe I would do one accent wall. I also thought about my friend Lindsey's apartment, and how she had brought color into her space by painting just the furnace vents running through the rooms.My office has the same type of vents that jut out from the wall, so I decided to use it as a place to land my pretty, cheap paint!

before

Random, totally off topic moment that you already read if you're my facebook friend: no joke, Mango just ran into the room, threw herself onto the desk, ran towards the window to peer out, and oinked JUST like a pig. I have a strange cat.


Anyways, back to the paint! I taped off the vent and had the whole project finished in about an hour. Such a fun little change! I'm finding the color reads really differently from different angles and lights, as you can see in different pictures below.

after

The funny part is that the few little things I've done to make this room less boring go perfectly with the paint! A blanket I have thrown over a chair in the corner, throw pillow on the same chair, and mobile of sorts that I made all have similar shades of blue and green.

made with scrapbook paper and a photo mobile my dad got me for christmas

a nice place to do paperwork, right?

Of course one project always gets me inspired to do another. Now I'd really like to figure out some way to make a cover for that ugly office chair, and I'd love to find or make some art for the long blank wall under the blue.