What I'm Loving: High Gloss Walls

For the ultimate in glamorous interiors you can't do much better than high gloss walls. Super shiny and lustrous almost to the point of blinding, high gloss walls are definitely a scene stealer in any room.  Unfortunately, if you're like me and your walls are textured, high gloss walls just aren't for you.  By nature, high gloss paint will accentuate every single bump and imperfection making textured walls a big, shiny mess. Not pretty.

The pros of shiny, high gloss paint is that it's incredibly durable and scrubable. Yes Spell Check, "scrubable" is a word, so spare me the red squiggly underline, mmkay?   So, if you've got kids and/or pets running amok with crayons, jelly-covered tiny fingers or this situation:

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you'll enjoy the scrubability of high gloss walls. If you decide to add some serious drama with high gloss paint, I'd like to highly recommend you hire a professional painter.  Sure you could do it yourself but if you're like me and you want perfection but lack the patience to fill, smooth and sand every single imperfection to a super-smooth finish......seriously, just hire a painter this once.

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If you can't commit to lacquering an entire room, how about just the ceiling? 

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Or kitchen cabinets:

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P.S. Anyone out there watching "It's a Brad, Brad World"?  I am officially hooked on Brad.  This show came along just in the nick of time.  Without any new episodes of "Flipping Out" to satisfy my reality show needs, I was thisclose to "accidentally" watching an episode of RHOBH or the Bachelor.  Shameful.

Reclaimed Wood Wall - Gotta Have It!

For the last year or so, I've been dreaming of bringing more warmth and texture into our "builder standard" home with an accent wall of reclaimed wood.  It's such a gorgeous look and I'd love to add this to the back wall of our media niche which currently looks like this:

This picture was actually taken a few years ago, right after I finished painting.  Forgive the cruddy picture from my phone and lack of styling.  Dear lord, is that an American Idol audition on the TV?  Note to self; when taking pictures with a TV in the shot, turn the damned thing off next time - or at least put it on something cool!

While I love the navy chevron pattern, It's been there a couple of years and I'm sort of over it and ready for a change.  How fabulous would some crusty, dusty barnwood look here?  Pretty amazing right?  Only one problem with that idea.  Arizona isn't exactly known for being littered with barns.  Dirt, tumbleweeds and stucco galore but barns.....eh, not so much.  

So I'd kind of put the thought of glorious wood wall of my own in the back of mind until I saw this over on YHL today:

Untreated 2 x 10's from Home Depot with a little Minwax stain in Dark Walnut (my absolute favorite wood stain no less!).  I can easily visualize ripping these in half lengthwise so they're thinner strips and achieving a similar look as barnwood.  Completely doable!  

Then I remembered one stunner of a wall over at Bower Power made of pallets.  Yes, pallets!  Genius!  We may not be up to our armpits in barns but it seems like every other month there's a pallet fire at some sketchy warehouse district in South Phoenix, so I know we're stocked up on those guys.  By the way, you've got to check out this girl's nursery, it's incredible:

This project isn't in the near future  but now that I've seen these two examples it's jumped up a few spots on the list.  

Take a look at some other examples using actual reclaimed wood:

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I think the Picker Sisters just peed themselves a little.