Well, y’all, it happened again. I woke up yesterday morning with sciatic pain. I was so frustrated and just wanted to cry, not because of the pain, but because of the fear of having to relive the most painful 10 days of my life.
Fortunately, the pain isn’t anything close to what it was before, and it seems to be a bit better this morning. Unfortunately, it was bad enough that it kept me from getting any work done on the studio yesterday. And that was incredibly disappointing because my schedule was a bit different this week with things being rearranged and regular weekly things being cancelled, so I had the potential of having four whole uninterrupted work days in a row. I can’t even remember the last time I had that! But now one of them has been wasted away, and today is questionable. I’m just so frustrated. (But to be clear, I’m also not looking for medical advice. 🙂 There was plenty of advice on previous posts about this issue that I can refer back to.)
So while I’m back to relaxing for a couple of days, I thought I’d get caught up on a few requests and answer a “most asked” question about my last project.
First up, the paint swatch cabinet. I did make a decision about cabinet door pulls. I went with an idea that several of you suggested — cheap wood knobs painted to match the colors they sit on. I worked on this Monday afternoon and posted an update on Monday’s post, but just in case you missed that, here’s another peek.
I think it’s the absolute PERFECT solution! I’m so glad some of you suggested this. These knobs were incredibly inexpensive, and while they did take about four coats of paint to get them just right (and that took way longer than I thought it should 😀 ), the end result was well worth the effort.
And I love that they’re very clearly visible in person (although in pictures they kind of disappear) so that it’s obvious that these are cabinet doors, but the pulls don’t demand attention. You can see how all of them look below. In person, they’re subtle and yet hard to miss. In a photo, a couple of them are hard to see.
I had quite a few people ask me about the baseboards, and if I would need to move the cabinet out from the wall to add baseboards behind it. The answer is no. I’m not going to move this cabinet away from the wall.
I did say I wanted it to look like a freestanding cabinet, and a freestanding cabinet would naturally have baseboards continue behind it. But after I got this cabinet completely put together and realized just how tall it was going to be, I quickly realized that it needs to be sitting against the wall, and it also needs to be secured to the wall (which I still need to do).
The cabinet is so tall and thin that I’d always be worried about it tipping over. There’s probably a zero percent chance of that ever happening. I’ve tugged and pulled on it to see if it moves away from the wall easily at the top, or feels top heavy at all, and it doesn’t in the least. But I’d rather be safe than sorry. So it will continue to sit flush against the wall, and I’ll just put baseboards around it on either side rather than behind it. So in the end, it’s a built-in cabinet and not a freestanding cabinet. And I’m okay with that. Safety is a higher priority.
And now on to the paint colors. I had a few people ask me for the paint colors, and since I’ve already done the work of organizing these colors into a gradient, I’m happy to pass that along so that those of you who want to do this project (or a similar project with these colors) don’t have to start from scratch.
I ended up laying out my color gradient on a diagonal. You can see how I arranged my colors in the picture below.
To keep from clogging up this post with a huge list of 72 different paint color that many people don’t want or need or care about, I put the list on a separate page. You can click here to find the list of 72 paint colors that I used on my cabinet. All of these color names are Behr paint colors from Home Depot. On the list of paint color names, the ones I mixed myself are indicated with an asterisk. So while I did use the Behr paint color name on my label, the actual paint color may not be a perfect match. But the ones I mixed are pretty darn close to the actual colors!
And finally, I have people ask me on a pretty regular basis about products and tools that I use. I’ve written past posts about certain categories, like my favorite paint products, but I’ve had a request for a comprehensive page of products that I use and suggest for my DIY projects, expanding beyond just products for painting.
I think that’s a great idea! I’ll also include my “can’t live without” tools so that you don’t have to search for those, either. So to help me in making that list as comprehensive as possible, I’d love to know if y’all have any questions about products or tools that I’ve used for specific projects. I’ll try to include everything I can think of, but your suggestions/questions may help me remember things I’d overwise forget.
Well, here’s hoping that I can actually get some work done today. I had gotten everything in the back entry of the studio cleared out on Tuesday evening, and had the walls all prepped for paint (which mainly required a lot of dusting).
My plan was to get the back entry painted yesterday, but then I woke up in too much pain to do any work at all yesterday. I’d love to paint those walls today, but only time will tell if I’ll be able to get any work done.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.