White is all right

It took two weeks, but we’ve finally pretty much settled into our new rental house. It’s still a bit upside down, but we’ve found spots for most of our stuff, and I’ve even managed to do a bit of Christmas decorating. Well, OK, I put up a tree ad hung a wreath :-) I highly recommend NOT moving two weeks before Christmas!

Our new rental house is completely different from our former rental house. It was also built in the ‘70s, but it looks like it could have been built 100 years ago. And it has FOUR levels – that’s a LOT of steps to go from the basement to the top floor! The cool thing is that the interior of this house is designed a lot like what I envision for our house. It has wide plank floors (although I like these ones better than ours because they’re real hardwood, not engineered), white walls (many are tongue & groove), simple white trim that’s also painted white, blue accents, wood beams & posts, and black door hardware.

Here’s the living room. The big windows are great, but the sun really beams in through them in the morning!

The two exterior doors on the main floor are painted blue. I suspect that all the doors were built specifically for this house.

Heading up to the second floor…

The pointed tops on the doors are cool, but I see potential for heads whacking on the door frame if you don’t go through the middle of the opening!

I heard that the previous owner did a lot of painting in this house, so I’m guessing that all the tongue & groove that’s now white started out stained pine. If that’s the case, there was a LOT of pine in this house! But it was definitely a good call, because the white walls really brighten and open up the house. Now I’m feeling really good about my decision to go with a lot of white in our house :-)

Feelin’ the navy & white vibe

It may be cliché, especially in a coastal house, but I love the combination of navy blue and white. Fresh white and rich navy blue together looks so crisp and classic.

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I keep wavering between different ideas for how to paint the main living space in our house. First I wanted shiplap, then I didn’t, and then I did again. And now we have 91 planks of the stuff, so there’s no turning back! I was going to paint it all white, but I had some Benjamin Moore Van Deusen Blue left over from painting the guest bathroom in our rental house and thought I’d try painting a few planks to see how they’d look.

And I loved them! So I painted a few more…

I think shiplap painted a dark colour gives it a more modern look.

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And seeing as the style of our house seems to be evolving into sort of modern industrial casual coastal, I think the navy blue shiplap fits right in.

And one of the best things about putting up the navy shiplap is that we finally have some colour in the house now – well, besides the lovely pink insulation :-)