I recently wrote a post about the possibility of using the rest of the mural from the breakfast room entryway. Don’t worry. I decided against it. But in that post I casually mentioned that I was thinking about removing the backsplash tiles in the walk-in pantry.
I received a few comments from a few people who were shocked that I would consider removing these tiles. Finally, I made these tiles myself very painstakingly by hand using resin and alcohol inks. It was a tedious (but very fun) process, so I can understand that the idea of removing them would be a surprise. I love these tiles and I enjoyed being able to tell people, “I made these tiles!” while I show them our home. It’s always fun to see people’s reactions.
But I still know that I will remove them at some point in the future (maybe next year or maybe even towards the end of this year). And I know once I start working on our breakfast room, which is on my list of home goals for this year, I’ll be even more interested in removing them. Let me explain why.
We bought this house in August 2013. The first room I remodeled by tearing it down to the studs and rebuilding it was the kitchen, which I completed in 2014. I originally painted the cabinets green (Sherwin Williams Derbyshire). I knew then that this was not the case my colorbut I tried to step out of my comfort zone and try something new.
The next room I remodeled was the hallway bathroom, which I completed in July 2015. In this room I returned to my favorite color (teal). I really loved this room, but this first attempt seems very safe to me. Although I was very proud of my work and it was a huge improvement over the original bathroom, I still struggled to find the look (or more specifically the colors) that really spoke to me. I knew teal was my color, but beyond that it was still an ongoing process to find the other colors that matched my favorite color and really spoke to me.
I skip a lot, but one of the next things I finished was the wall in our front living room that I call the entry wall, which I completed in June 2016. At this point, I began to realize that my rooms were missing warm colors. As long as I stuck to the teal and green tones, I ended up with rooms that felt very safe and beautiful, but I started to realize that they were missing the “wow” factor. So I started playing around with small doses of warm colors, starting with these coral dining chairs. I think it was during my unpredictable year when I foolishly tried to turn our living room into a dining room. The whole experiment was a disaster, but I loved this hand drawn bird and branch design I did on this wall.
And then in May 2017 I finished the breakfast room. Once again I played it safe with teals and greens and this time I tried adding some dark purple. And once again I had a nice room, but here too the “wow” factor was missing. Everything felt very safe.
And around the same time, in June 2017, I also repainted my kitchen cabinets a medium teal. At this point. At least I had learned my first big lesson. It’s much more important to fill my home with colors that I absolutely love than to try to force myself to step out of my comfort zone. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to like anything in your home. Your home should be a reflection of the things you naturally love and that reflect who you are. And it was teal my color for about two decades. After painting my kitchen cabinets from green to teal, our house felt more like a home and not a testing lab for decorating ideas.
But even then, I still had trouble finding the rest my colors. Teal is great. Teal is my favorite color and I love all shades of teal, from medium to dark and everything in between. But I knew that even if I did, I couldn’t decorate an entire house with different shades of teal and be happy with it Is my favorite color. So I kept limping along, trying to figure it out.
Here too I will skip some steps. But eventually I went back to the entry wall and redid it…again. By this point, I had put my ridiculous idea of converting our living room into a dining room behind me and returned to my senses when I realized that this room had to be a living room. So I started with the entrance wall. And even though I was very confident in my decision to paint the wall teal, you can see that I was still looking for the rest of the colors. I added some green. I added some purple. Still no “wow” factor.
But I think that wall sparked the idea of pink and coral in my head, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I remember finding these bird prints, and when I was deciding on the order in which to hang them, I made a very conscious decision that the pink bird had to be at the top and center. There was something about that pinkish-red color with the teal that really spoke to me. I had no idea back then how much this one small decision would influence all of my future decorating decisions.
I still didn’t realize that the “wow” factor that was missing from my rooms was pink and coral, so I went about my business. And the next big project I did was the walk-in pantry. And when I built this room, decided on the colors (teal was the obvious color for the cabinets), and made the tiles for the backsplash, I still used teal, green, and purple. After all, they fit perfectly in the wonderful breakfast room that I had completed just a few years earlier. And I finished the pantry in January 2019. It was a very nice pantry that matched my very nice breakfast room, but both lacked any vibrancy or vibrancy.
And then came the decision that caused a stir for me. I gave the hallway bathroom a colorful makeover, painted the vanity a warm color, and added a shower curtain that was teal and some warm colors – pink, coral, orange. And finally I had a space that felt like it had some life and vibrancy. And then it clicked for me. Yes, that is teal my color. But it’s the addition of those warm colors that brings it to life.
Still trying to figure everything out, I spent some time working on my studio (the first version of the back entrance, which was green, black and white) and then the guest bedroom (which we used as our master bedroom for a while). But as I worked on the next two rooms, I felt like I had finally found the right footing.
In 2021 I worked on finishing the music room and living room. And then it all finally came together and the magic happened. I finally realized that the colors I had been missing all along – my colors – were the ones from the pink family. And when I finally allowed myself to use pink tones, I finally felt like I had found my style and color palette. The addition of pink did something to my eyes that no other warm color could do.
So from 2013 to 2021 I fought my way through. Seven and a half years. But now I know my style. I know my colors. And I feel very confident in my colors. I know they’re not for everyone, but for me they’re just right. These are the colors that make me feel comfortable and at home. Teal is my color. This has been the case for 20 years. But pink is also my color. And I love the way the two work together. Teal is a safe, dark, grounding color. The pink gives life and vibrancy.
If only I had learned what colors I have before redoing the pantry and making these tiles, I might have added pink. And maybe I wouldn’t think about redoing the backsplash there now. But that’s how life often goes, right? I had fun making these tiles and have loved this pantry for years as it looks now. But when I finally get the chance to redesign our breakfast room, I want to have complete freedom to do what I want to do to give the pantry a little freshening up too, and I don’t want to be limited by those tiles. Now that I know my colors, I want to be able to imagine both the dining room and the pantry in those colors.
And who knows? Maybe I’ll even decide the pantry needs to look more like this…
