Just do it.

Are there things in your house (or office, for that matter) that you can't stand, and want to change, but you're just putting it off?  And for no good reason?

After reading this post on Young House Love, I decided it was time.  The brown had to go. 

The girl who lived in our house before us took very good care of the place, and it was decorated nicely.  But.  There have been several areas that we needed to change to make it feel a little more like ours.  For example....each of the closets were a different color.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Our coat closet, right at the front door, was royal blue.  My closet was this orangey-pink color, Matt's was lavendar, and the one in the guest bedroom was a lovely shade of what I've named poop-brown.  The office was this awful lime color, and the guest bathroom matched the closet.  There were also some stripes that had to immediately go.  (this picture was taken before we moved in)

After a few paint changes that happened before we even had the movers deliver our things, we've been sitting on lots of other changes, making them gradually over the years.  Cady, sweet Cady, made a decision that the wall paper in the powder room had to go (by helping me to rip it down when she was 2 mos old and had escaped her crate... I won't go into how husband forgot to latch it before leaving for the evening)...so it's now a lovely shimmery green/gold color.  We painted the bright green kitchen to a more calming blue/green (Homestead Green from Benjamin Moore), I added a red accent wall in the dining room, and painted the guest bathroom a much quieter and brighter tan, called Antique White.

I have been feeling lately like there's a lot of brown in this house, still, and when I saw the YHL post, I knew it was time.  The backs of the bookcases were brown, the walls are all tan, the couch is a dark tan...it was getting to me.  So Friday afternoon I stopped by Benjamin Moore and picked up the Dragonfly swatch (along with a couple other gray's to see where I might change some other colors).  Yesterday I went to Home Depot and got the color matched with their primer and paint in one, and went to work.

It's so different!  I'm pretty much loving it - it is definitely taking some getting used to.  I feel like everything stands out SO much more now that the background isn't such a dark color.  I think I might need to change out of a few of the display items, and minimize the number of colors on the wall, but otherwise I think it looks great!  It really only took one Saturday afternoon - I started around 2ish and had the entire wall put back together before dinner.  I'm ready to do some other projects that I've been putting off now - mostly painting my bathroom.  I'm having the hardest time selecting a color...but again, I think I just need to pick one and go for it.

What home improvement projects have you done lately?  Where do you get your inspiration?  How do you select paint colors?