Thanks to everybody for the birthday wishes last week! We had a great weekend – went out with friends, spent time outside, and caught up on lots of sleep. 🙂 Here are a couple shots from the rooftop patio on Dickson Street where my sweet friends and I celebrated my birthday. It was a blast!
After the celebrating this weekend, Stephen and I still found some time to work on a couple projects around the house. Something that has been on my to-do list for a long time was addressing the end table situation in this corner of our living room. You see, from inside everything looked great, but that end table was hiding a sneaky secret.
When I refinished that end table, I completely neglected the back, assuming it would always be up against a wall and nobody would ever see it.
Wrong! Of course when we rearranged our living room, I had to place it perfectly in front of the window to our backyard. Every time we were outside with the drapes open, we’d see the tacky half-painted back of this end table and cringe.
See what I mean? There was still blue paint around the edges (leftover from its former painted days) and a big ol’ number stamped across the back.
So yesterday afternoon, I took out the drawers, threw a drop cloth over our living room carpet, and got to work.
The goal was to cover up all that mess and have a nice clean back to look at from outside the window.
I decided a quick coat of dark paint was the way to go, so we dug through our paint stash and found this quart of glossy paint in “Java Bean.” Anything brown worked for me, so this was the winning color!
I used a big paintbrush to apply 2 coats to the back and a smaller one to make sure all the edges were nicely covered.
Here’s a look at the new and improved view from behind once the paint had dried.
Of course the true test was putting the end table back in place. I’m happy to report that things from the outside of this window now look as seamless as they do from the inside!
After I’d used that dark brown paint, I was a bit unsure that the two colors of brown (the stained wood and Java Bean paint) would look good together. A happy coincidence was that you can’t even see the legs of the piece from outside, so visitors only see a dark brown furniture piece from the back yard.
Not a bad way to improve a view for free, right?
I’ve always been a white-lined drapes kind of girl. I think they help make a home look cohesive from outside without sacrificing style inside. However, until now I’d never thought about how our furniture would look with the drapes open! Taking the time to paint the back of this piece was totally worth the seamless look we achieved. Now we don’t have to worry about keeping those drapes shut when friends hang out in our backyard!
Do you keep in mind the view from outside when choosing curtains or deciding what to place in front of your windows? Do you like the outside of your windows to match? Thanks for reading!
