A 5-Year Look at How Our Texas House Has Evolved

 

 

I began this post a couple of years ago, but didn’t paint in this powder bathroom until November 2023…

 

 

I was pretty happy with having tan walls the first year or so here, but by late 2022, I’d had enough of tan ceilings and tan walls.

I began painting…

The walls in our home have been painted a warm tan and it glowed in the evenings. During the winter when the sun moves away, the living room doesn’t receive much sunlight until very late in the day. I erroneously thought that the most recent homeowners had picked out this color. However, a neighbor across the way had a lighter, creamier version and the ceilings and walls were similarly painted.

 

I liked their paint color and would have stuck with it (color matching as needed). I think I would have painted the ceilings white again, though. I was pretty happy to not have had to step right into painting as we moved in. A definite win in 2019!

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the same paint in our north facing kitchen and you can see how warm and inviting it was when all lit up. But when the lights are off, which is most of the time, it is dark.

 

 

 

 

Perfect for showing off one’s decor, it steps out to the forefront at times then recedes quietly into the background at others… 

 

 

Our bedroom photographed last summertime.

 

In the evening it takes on a deeper shade and can be really relaxing… This area got the Comet Dust treatment, too. 😉

 

 

Pairing this tan paint with trim painted in a soft white really makes each stand out against the other. I love the French style wainscot and picture paneling! Having the whole home freshly painted has been a blessing and has given us time to live with it, to see how it works with our decor.

Our fireplace late last spring.

 

 

I think I am ready for a change, though. (*This post was begun in 2020, so it’s fun to see what I shared and photographed and wrote back then.)

 

Many of these photographs were lightened up a lot as this house can be very dark as the sun swings around and also when it is overcast or on rainy days. We have cut back and limbed up the backyard oak trees. Mr. Ethereal also stripped off new baby branchlets in front and out back (2023 – This needs to be done again going into 2023), which has helped bring in more light. Oddly enough, our frisky squirrels zoom up and down the branches and knock off little branchlets for us now! ( summer 2024)

 

I think the timing is right to do a little repainting and to make this home more our style.

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Painting in our front bathroom

Here is Valspar Comet Dust #5006-1A grey I painted during the first summer here in my Craft Room (2019). I had to repaint that room right away because it is a small and very dark room with little natural light. I brought this paint can with me from our last home.

I love its nice soft grey color!

We used Valspar Dove Grey and Valspar Comet Dust when we repainted the walls in the Big House in California from its original 1990’s yellows and barn red downstairs in our family room and in the laundry area (no photographs, but the layout leading into our garage here in Texas is similar; one of the things we liked about this house!). 

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Crazy me in that yellow bathroom!

Upstairs in the kids’ bathroom we repainted Comet Dust over a couple of coats of Kilz primer which covered the deep yellow the previous owners’ had painted. Comet Dust looks light without lights having to be turned on, even during rainy weather. During the daytime to save on electricity costs, we tend to not turn on lighting and just use sunlight. 

Still love the travertine style ceramic flooring we had installed!

Those  remodeling posts on the upstairs second bathroom can be found here and here. This color really helped brighten up this dark bathroom. I still stare at this photograph. I loved how this bathroom turned out and I still love that house… It had wonderful light all year long and a pool ~ great for cooling off on hot summer days. 

 

Had we stayed, my next project was to paint those solid oak cabinets white, as I had in our master bathroom. The next step would have been to replace the two countertops with a light white-grey granite or marble.

 

Much more my style.

We have a really nice light fixture to replace these Hollywood lights, but it’s just getting Mr. Ethereal interested in doing the electrical work ~ not his favorite thing. He once got blown across a room and burned from a faulty circuit breaker where he worked while in college at a tennis court facility in Sacramento, California. We just make absolutely sure that the breakers are turned off as well as the light switches. 😉

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The tile in the bathtub is still a tan color, but I may have that redone at some point. For now, a cute print brings the two colors together.

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Our livingroom ~ summer 2024

There are usually little branchlets scattered all over this area but I must have cleaned up in order to shoot this photograph (June 2024). 😉 One of our squirrel friends is out there enjoying his dinner.

And here is our living room now. I think I published when I finished painting the living room in May 2023, and here is how it looks right around July 4th this year.

I swapped out the floral pillow covers for these nautical red, white & blue ones I sewed a few years ago.

The caned chair to the left is in need of new paint and a refresh, too. On the list… 😉

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Well, that’s a look back at how our Texas home has changed over these past five years! As I look around, we have done a lot. In our past two homes, we worked on many projects there, too, over each of nine and eleven years.There is always more to do but for now, as we head towards fall, this is where we are.

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Happy Saturday,