q is for quandie

Last year I picked up several original oil paintings while out garage saling.

You may remember my faux Matisse.

I also found a lovely mid-mod painting of the what one of my readers identified as the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

And then most recently, I bought home this landscape from an estate sale.

Originally I was picking these up to resell, but then I decided I rather liked the idea of creating a gallery wall in the q branch using these paintings, and a few other things … like those crusty old paint brushes that I love.

So after I got my Globe Artichoke paint on the walls, I started laying out my gallery wall (FYI, turns out this is another good use for a baby grand piano).

I decided to also use a pair of small bamboo frames that I shared with you guys back in February 2021.  I had originally made up a couple of collages using old family letters and photos to fill them, and I painted them black.  But later I gave the frames a metallic look using Dixie Belle’s Bronze Gilding Wax.

But for my collage wall I wanted to turn them into small landscapes.  So I went on Etsy and purchased some downloadable painted landscape images.  It was simple to print them out, mount them on scrapbook paper and pop them into the frames.

I’m quite happy with how they turned out.

Last, but certainly not least, I had this old oil painting that my grandfather painted.

One of these days I may attempt to clean that painting.  Grandpa was a smoker, hence the yellow tinge to that sky.

It was unframed, but in a miraculous sort of way, I had an old frame on hand that fit it perfectly.

Aside from most of these things being original oil paintings, there wasn’t a whole lot else to unify them.  I’ve got a portrait, a city scape, and a handful of landscapes.  The frames ranged from a bit ornate, to simple barnwood.  I felt like I needed to find a way to tie them all together, so I repeated my use of the Bronze Gilding Wax on the frames.

You can use a brush to apply the wax, but I like to put on a latex glove and just use my finger.

For the barnwood frame, I just used the wax on the thin black wood trim that was around the outer edge of the frame.

It was a small change, but it toned down that black and helped this frame fit in with the others despite that rustic barnwood.

I know some people will cut out paper templates of their items and then tape them to the wall to get the placement right for a gallery wall, but I just winged it.  I started in the middle with the two small bamboo frames and then I worked up and out from there.  I will admit that I had to move a couple of nails after their initial placement to get it just right.  But I’m not someone who gets squeamish about nail holes in the wall.  I just fill them and touch up the paint, easy peasy.

If any of you also have plaster walls, I’ll share my favorite Martha Stewart tip for putting nails into plaster.  Place a small piece of scotch tape where the nail is going to go and then pound in your nail.

This helps keep your plaster from crumbling.  I have my own secondary tip, which is to fold over one edge of the tape onto itself for easy removal later should you ever decide to repaint your walls.

Another tip for anyone with less than smooth walls is to always use flat paint.  If your paint has a sheen it will highlight all of those imperfections.  Flat paint tends to be less washable than eggshell or satin though.

I absolutely love how my gallery wall turned out.

And I created it for under $50 total.  Pretty much every item came from a garage sale (except Grandpa’s painting, and the downloaded prints).

Next up for this room is finding a rug.  It’s a little tricky because a square rug will work best and there aren’t a ton of square options out there.  I’ve found one at Wayfair that I think will work, but I’m really nervous about ordering a rug online.  So often items ordered online look nothing like their photo on a computer screen.  Have any of you ever ordered rugs from Wayfair?  Or do you have another recommendation for finding a square rug?  If so, leave me a comment and let me know.

Mr. Q and I have lived in our house for a little over 35 years.  That’s a long time, I know.

When we first bought it in 1988 we considered it a ‘starter home’ and planned to build equity for a few years and then move on to something bigger and better.

Instead, we fell in love with this house, despite the really drafty windows, the treacherous basement stairs and the world’s smallest bathroom.  Even now I can’t imagine how we’ll ever be able to sell this house, whenever it comes to that.

But I digress, this post is actually about making over the q branch, which is what I call my study … or the room where I write this blog.  I only brought up how long we’ve been in this house to explain why this will be the 5th time I’ve painted this room!

Let’s review, shall we?

First, let me back up for a minute and describe the room.  It is a small, square-ish room that is just off the piano room … or what was originally the formal dining room.  It doesn’t have a closet, and it doesn’t have a door.  It has a wide arched opening into the piano room.

I often wonder what the original purpose of the room was back in 1904 when our house was built.  It may have had a regular door back then, I’m fairly sure that the wide, arched openings between this room, the piano room, the living room and the front hall are not original.  And in fact, we added the one between the kitchen and the piano room.  So it’s possible this room was intended to be a small, main floor bedroom for someone who couldn’t do the stairs … an elderly parent perhaps?  I’ve also often wondered if it was originally a small kitchen of some kind, before the house had indoor plumbing.

Regardless of its original purpose, I struggled for years to create an identity for the room.

The first use we came up with was as a space to display my dollhouse.  My dad made the dollhouse for me when he retired early, and I sure can understand why he made it so elaborate now that I’m also retired! He had some time on his hands.

I papered the room in a mauve and cream pinstripe paper, and painted all of the trim in a matching dark mauve.  Here’s the only photo I could find from that look.

Ugh!  I can’t believe I once liked that look!  Remember balloon shades?  LOL, what can I say?  It was the 90’s.

Next I went through my ‘red phase’.  I painted the living room and piano room walls red.  That definitely didn’t work with the mauve, or with the big pink dollhouse.  So the dollhouse got moved upstairs and then …for some unknow reason I decided to paint the room brown!  Can you imagine?  Brown?!

Well, you don’t have to imagine, here’s a really bad quality photo …

Yikes!  Not much better than the mauve.

The room still didn’t have an identity at that point and we never actually used it for anything.

But then I decided that I needed a home office/craft room and the room underwent makeover number 3.  I painted the walls chartreuse, and the trim went back to white.

Yep, bright green walls with black furniture.  I loved it for a while, until I didn’t anymore.

The next transformation was when the q branch’s identity became fully formed.  I once again painted the walls, this time in what I thought was a neutral greige, but was really more just plain beige, and I painted the ceiling a very pale blue.

That was back in 2015.  Since then I’d made a few changes to the furniture, bringing in my English cupboard …

and most recently, changing out my desk.

I have to say, I never really loved that wall color.  I often admire the all-white, pale neutral sort of look in other people’s spaces, it can work well if there are a variety of shades ranging from pale greige to creamy white, and a variety of textures.  But somehow it never quite works for me.

So after 9 years of that look, it was time to change it up again.

The first step was to pick a new wall color.  I’d been drooling over dramatic shades of dark green over on pinterest, so I went to Home Depot and looked through the paint colors.  I picked out a color called Alfalfa Extract, it looked perfect.

So I had them mix up a color sample jar for me and I brought it home.

I painted up a Sure Swatch paintable test swatch and put it on the wall.  Then I studied it under different lighting conditions.  That was when I realized that the room is pretty dark.  It has west facing windows, but there is a tall arborvitae hedge just a few feet from the windows.  It’s great for providing privacy, but it also blocks a lot of light.

The color that looked perfect in the brightly lit store was too dark for this room.  Even after waiting almost a week for a bright sunny day to light it up, it was still too dark.

So then I went to Menards and picked up a couple more options.  The first of these was so close to the Alfalfa Extract that I didn’t even bother to put up the swatch, but the 2nd was a bit lighter and also a bit more olive.

When I first painted up the Sure Swatch with Globe Artichoke I thought for sure that it was not going to be the right color.  It was too light, and way more olive than I thought I wanted.  But I painted the swatch in the piano room, which gets a lot more light.  When I put the swatch on the wall in the q branch (these swatches have a post-it note like stickiness on the back), I realized that it was exactly what I was looking for.

The moral of my story?  You really need to test paint colors in the room you’ll be using them in before making a decision.  If I have learned anything after painting, and re-painting, the rooms in our house for 35 years, this is it.  So many factors can influence how a color looks on your walls; natural light, artificial lighting, floor color, and/or ceiling color.

So once my color was chosen, I spent a couple of days last week painting the walls of the q branch in Globe Artichoke.

And I love it!  The pine cupboard really pops against the rich deep olive, as does my desk.

You may have noticed that I did not paint the radiator pipes that go up the wall in the corner behind the desk.  That’s because the temps were below zero outside, so those pipes were too hot to paint.  Ditto behind the radiator itself.  I’ll have to save those areas for warmer days, and that may be sooner than I thought since they are predicting temps in the 40’s for next week.

I also think I’m going to want to repaint the ceiling now.  The pale blue isn’t quite right with the green, I think it needs to go back to white.  I am on the hunt for a new desk lamp (I think the current one is too small), a possibly a new chair and/or rug.  I also want to find some olive green throw pillows for the living room sofa so that I can tie in a bit of this wall color out there too.

One last thing for today, I wanted to mention that I did all of the cutting in along both the crown molding and baseboard without any taping.  I used the Zibra Triangle brush and it worked beautifully.

So if you have any rooms to paint, you might want to consider picking one up.  I purchased mine at Home Depot.  Now I just have to get it clean after all of that hard work!

OK, so I’m a little afraid to ask what you guys think of this color.  I know dark walls aren’t for everyone, but I seem to be drawn to them.  What do you think?