Just when I said I'd never paint again...

First just a quick mention that I added a new page to the blog, which has a floor plan of the apartment. Granted most anyone who would be reading this has been here in person, but I thought it might be helpful anyway. Now there are two tabs at the top of the blog, "Home" and "Apartment floor plan."

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Ok, so on to my most recent painting adventure. You'd think that having just written a post about the labors of painting, I wouldn't have been so eager to embark on another painting project. But even though I wrote about it recently, it's been almost 6 months since we actually did the bedroom painting project. Apparently that was long enough to dull my memory and enable me to think, "painting, that would be a fun project!"

Our apartment is technically a two bedroom, though I would never want to live here that way - there's one room that's distinctly a bedroom, then two rooms in the heart of the layout that could be used as a living room (which we use for our "den," aka the room with our bookshelves and desks) and as a second bedroom (which we use as our living room). The room we use for our living room has a single door that opens to the front hall, as well as two pocket doors that open to the den (when tenants use it as a bedroom, I assume they keep the pocket doors closed and use the door to the hall as the main door). [Check out the new floor plan page if this doesn't make sense.] Typically we keep all the doors open, and you might not even notice that there are doors rather than just doorways - the pocket doors just disappear, and the door to the hall we open all the way and then keep a chair in front of so you barely even notice the door (see below).

But during the winter, we've started to keep both doors closed more often, as that way the living room warms up really quickly and otherwise our apartment tends to be fairly drafty (it's an old house, and we're above the basement).

But with both doors closed, there was an explosion of white surfaces that was really messing with the aesthetic. Below, both doors closed:

I didn't want to hang any art, because we keep the doors open at least 70% of the year, plus whenever we're entertaining (except when we have overnight guests, when we close the doors to create a little guest room).

So, I decided to paint them. After seeing a few inspiring photos of interior black doors (por ejemplo, on one of my favorite blogs: Manhattan Nest), I decided to follow suit - but I wanted to keep some of the panel detailing white. I picked up a quart of Onyx by Benjamin Moore in satin finish, and I love the result!

Amazing, right?

Ok, just teasing, this is after one coat of paint and before I taped off and painted the panel trim.

I did two coats of black, then taped around the panel trim because I'm really just not steady enough to paint it freehand. The green tape is "frog tape" instead of regular painter's tape, it seems to bleed less (though I still had to touch up a few edges).

After two coats of black and two coats of white on the panels, I was done. For reals this time, I love it!

Every time I ask Sam what he thinks he asks me what I think, so I'm not quite sure what that means.... But I really like it, I think it adds a little character but is completely invisible if/when we want. Altogether about 7 hours of painting (I'm pretty inefficient), but I'm pleased with the result!