Orange You A Failure?

We painted our teeny, tiny half bath orange. Like trick-or-treat orange. And we freaking LOVE IT.

One day I looked at Jon and said "I think we should paint the half bath orange." Jonathan "hmmmm, yeah, that could be cool." And thus the orange bathroom was born.

Once again we have the awesome people at Design Seeds to thank for our color inspiration. And Pinterest. Thank you Pinterest a million times.

I found this Autumn inspired color palette board on Pinterest.



And this cool stencil idea.



Naturally, I wanted to merge both ideas and test it out in our half bath. Why? Size. Its a small space. I think bold colors look best in tiny spaces because they're unexpected and because it's easy to fix in case it doesn't go right. Not all of my bright ideas pan out. Case in point, this bathroom. But we'll get to that in a bit.

First Jon and I went our happy place! Home Depot (Seriously, they know us there). And began comparing all the orange paint chips against the picture on my phone. I wanted to go with a terracotta orange, lighter and softer than the orange we ended up with. Jonathan selected the Halloween (that's really the name of the color) orange. All you married people know comprise is key and since I pick the general design of our projects, its only fair that Jon has final say on the color and items that go into a room.

$30, my dad's (have you noticed he's the official helper?) help and a bucket of paint later we have a super orange bathroom!

In the midst of all the paint selection (it's actually a longer process that it would seem), I found a Moroccan inspired stencil that was almost exactly what I had envisioned. Hobby Lobby loves coupons so I got it for 40% off. I. LOVE. A. DEAL.

After the painted had fully dried I went in I tried to stencil the wall. I had read on a few blogs and DIY sites that some people had just used a paint pen to outline and color in the stencil lines. I have loads of paint pens left over from my sorority days and figured this would be a time consuming but not hard project. I was mostly right. It wasn't hard but it SO did not turn out like I thought it would. See?

It all looks good from far away. Up close it looks TERRIBLE.

I'll be honest. I hated it. Jon kept saying "it looks fine honey, just rustic." I'm not really sure what he meant but that's not what I was going for. So Jonathan painted over it. Just covered up my mess and moved on.

I think it looks better this way. Really though.

Fine! To be completely honest that's what I've been telling myself to help deal with my epic failure. We could have tried to make it happen by repainting the whole room white and then stenciling with orange paint buuuut that would have required more paint and putting off finishing the bathroom for another week. And neither one of us were willing to do it. I think Jonathan would have looked at me and said "You cray cray" (he likes to quote me). Plain orange it is!

Moral of the story: one bold idea at a time. We still get compliments on the color so we must have done something right. And I'm not totally giving up on the stencil. After my massive fail I asked Jonathan if we could use the stencil in the dining room and he asked if I was going to do it. Obviously I said yes but I'm not so secretly (this is online after all) hoping that he'll continue to be the best husband ever and help me out when the time comes. Don't worry Jon, we have plenty of time!