Paint It Black

In the 9th grade I had a lot of feelings . I was completely struck by this new music that I had discovered. It was Taking Back Sunday, and The Used, and Panic! at the Disco , and Coheed and Cambria and I was completely sure that I was the only person who truly felt all of these deep feelings that I would one day feel in a studio apartment in New York City, probably smoking cigarettes out my window with my chipped black fingernails. I wore black on black to school every day, I listened to my walkman (yes, you read that right, my WALKMAN) as I travelled from class to class and I kid you not when someone asked me what I was listening to I told them "You've never heard of them." Man oh man!

That all eventually faded as I navigated into young adulthood and whatever you would call the stage I'm into now. It's held on through my continued love of punk and rock music (please insert rock and roll emoji hand here), my appreciation of a leather jacket (and biker boots if you've got 'em), and my adoration of all things Halloween. There's still a spooky emo girl inside me somewhere.

When it came time to move to our new house I couldn't get the idea of black statement walls or black french doors out of my head. I just wanted to paint it freaking black. 

It took a heck of a lot of convincing but I did eventually get Jordan to sway over to my side and agree to hand me a paint brush and let me go wild. It helped that we had painted a mantle and our wetbar black and Jordan really liked it (don't worry- I'll be showing you every inch of this house and all the things I goth-ed out but that's not for today).

I started with painting a statement wall in our bedroom black. It was honestly so fun to do! I made a playlist of all of my favourite emo songs from my youth and let the 14 year old me live her dreams henny! Now, again, that's a tour for another day.

Painting our bedroom wall black and doing a good job at it gave me free reign over the rest of the house with my charcoal dipped brush!

I had my eyes set on the back of our front door. That's right- the back! I've always wanted to infuse a space with a pop of colour on the back of a door- or, if you will, a pop of an absence of colour.

Here's what the back of the door looked like before:

Nothing horrible or awful- but was it helping my live out my wildest emo dreams? No no no.

And I present to you the door now:

Ain't she cute!?

And my apologies for the lighting on the door- yah girl is still learning her way around a camera and is having a heck of a time figuring out how to take pictures of walls with windows on them without bleaching out the window or covering the rest of the shot in complete darkeness. It's a process.

As consolation for the learning curve I will award you with one tour of my front entrance. I know you wanted to see them deets!

If you would have told me a year ago that I'd be sitting around thinking about a cute way to store our face mask collection I would have laughed in your face. 2020 is a trip my friends!

Previously I've never liked a house that was a split (to be honest we don't know how to define our house- side split? Front split? Raised something or other?) but I really haven't minded it with this house. The front door walks into a sizable landing and I've enjoyed decorating this little entrance of ours. The other bonus is that under the stairs is a crawl space which has been great for storing things we want to keep out of the way and organized in bins. I also enjoy the fact that the stairs are only a half flight because I've already fallen down a set. It was traumatic.

So there's the front entrance of our home. It has come a long way from it's wallpaper-ed beginnings and feels like a calm and beautiful introduction to our home. 

Can't wait to share more of our home with you- oh and more tales of my delusional adolescent thoughts- that's probably what you come here for too! 

So I'll leave you with this: my paint it black emo playlist that warms my little black heart even to this day.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown

Feeler of Very Serious Feelings since 2005