If you redo a DIY, does it cancel it out? Or - repainting my stencil wall

If you redo a DIY, does it cancel it out? Or - repainting my stencil wall

• 11.03.2015

It's been a long time since I painted a room or made major decor changes in our townhouse. It was a huge accomplishment to decorate it the way I wanted it, and it felt like a complete project... so I've been just living in it for a couple years! But, I have the bug for a new project and since our moving plans didn't work out this summer and I don't have the perfect "cosmetic fixer" and spare cash to update it... I'm focusing my creative energy back to the place we have to make it even more perfect for us.

So that means a little redecorating! I wanted to start with a simple project with a big impact - PAINT.

One thing I learned in our recent months of house-hunting is that I like neutral walls. I know bright greens and yellows can be fun sometimes, but the homes I liked best had pale, neutral walls. Like my home did when it started... although mine looked so brand new and vanilla that I felt like I needed a few accents to make it look less naked. 

One of the cooler projects I did in our townhouse was stencil our half bath walls, faux wallpaper style. (We had added the chair railing and painted the dark accent color earlier.) But now... the color was so dark and the accents so strong (shimmery!), I felt like this was the first place where I could make a very different decor choice and still like it.

I couldn't decide on a color. I knew I wanted something neutral. Tan seemed weird with all the greys we have. I thought maybe there was a perfect beige-ey, pale color, but... I couldn't find one on my first trip to the paint store and I gave up. So instead, I literally made a mix of the pale, pale grey of all our walls and ceilings and the darker grey I used as accent stripes in our upstairs guest bathroom. (Serious plus of this project: it was totally free!)

This bathroom has been through a lot. Here's its story:

But it felt so weird to be painting over (after sanding down) something that I had worked so hard at. It was sad to see the stenciling go away.

It was a HUGE change. Every time I walked past the bathroom after repainting, I did a double-take at the bright, calm, pretty new room. I LOVED it!

I also recently did an art audit and have been thinking about moving art around to update some walls. I was sure that after I repainted, the lips print and white frames wouldn't look right. They worked pretty well on the dark stenciled walls! And the dark stenciled bathroom hardly needed any art at all since it was so visually interesting by itself.

But, perhaps out of laziness but maybe ingenuity, I put the art right back as it was before after painting, and I actually like still like it. I thought about putting some more art on the main wall you face as you walk in, but I can't decide what. It's so prominent. Suggestions??

I love the new bathroom color. I'm trying not to feel like I'm insulting my previous self's DIY powers and design by painting over my hours of work. And I still haven't committed to any new art locations in the house!

But it feels good to update.