Have Paint, Will Redecorate

Over the last few months I've painted the kitchen, and chosen a color scheme  for decorating the rest of the room.  Slowly but surely I'm making progress on the job.  With a bit of revamping, some of the artwork and knickknacks now fit the new look of the room.  All it took was some acrylic paint from the craft store.

This painting is one of my favorite pieces.  It's by Bro.Cletus Behlmann, a Marianist Brother who grew up here and went to college in the area. I bought the painting for a good price at a charity auction in the mid 1990s, probably because it was surrounded by an avocado-green mat that was't "in" at the time.

Back then my kitchen was country yellow and blue, so my first mat renovation was a medium blue which mirrored the color of the border.  Several years later when the walls became a soft peach, I repainted the mat the color you see here.  Doesn't it look out of place leaning against my new khaki walls?  It was time for another change.

Here's the same painting with a new mat color.  Ironically, now it's probably close to the original avocado!

The first step in picking a new shade was to take a photo of the painting with my cell phone camera.  At the craft store, I was able to compare that photo to the bottles of acrylic on the shelf.  Because the paint aisle was at the very back of the store, with no natural light available, I picked the two bottles that I thought were the closest in color.

Back home, I brushed out samples of both colors and chose the one that looked the best.  Carefully taking the picture out of the frame, I used a craft brush to apply a coat of paint to the mat.  After it dried I applied a second coat, let it dry again, and put everything back together.

Here's another example of what a difference a coat of paint can make.  The rattan mirror that Pepper is enjoying has also been in the kitchen for quite some time, leaning against the wall on top of the cabinets.   I believe it was white when I bought it at a garage sale. It got painted a bright blue, which really stood out against the light colored wall. In it's next incarnation, it changed to the light moss green color you see here.  Now that color is gone, too.

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I think this basil color is much more sophisticated, don't you?  I used the bottle of acrylic paint that didn't make the cut for the mat project.  The frame was dirty from being above the cabinets, so I gave it a good wash and let it dry before I started painting. I didn't have to take anything apart for this job, but since I'm a messy painter I put a piece of blue painter's tape around the perimeter of the mirror to keep paint off of it.


Now that these projects are done, I can turn my attention to all the others that await.