In the olden days (I’m 30, I can say that right?) people used to rip pages out of magazines and save them, waiting for the day when their project would begin and the massive binder full of snip-its could be paged through. That was B.P., Before Pinterest. Now, one only has to sit for hours upon hours, devoting days and weeks of their lives to scoring through the bottomless pit that is inspiration on the all-knowing Pinterest site. I can attest to this, as Pinterest first came out when I moved to the cities. Not having any money to do activities or TV, Pinterest was my new time-filler. Fast forward 5 years, and I have amassed ONLY 4, 326 pins (believe me, that is not a lot. Plus, I like to go through my boards every now and again and delete pins, sometimes hundreds at a time, which is generally unheard of on Pinterest). Now, most of my inspiration comes from that site, as the eye-candy is so good:

Seen these ideas before? That’s because I’ve added molding to our doors, done a fantastic stripe treatment in our hallway, and used open shelving in our kitchen. Not all of my inspiration comes from Pinterest, though, I have a giant stack of magazines that I have hoarded over the years, which I periodically go through. Even though I have seen the same pictures over and over, once in blue moon I find something that strikes

I saw this photo of a garage as I was searching for a color scheme for the gym. I liked how there was two tones of blue, with black accents and very dark floors. Since the gym has large black items in it and a dark gray floor, this was a great image to see how those colors could balance each other out. It was even better to show the hubs what I was thinking in visual form, so he could excitedly jump up and down with me that we had found a color scheme (I jumped up and down for him, I had plenty of enthusiasm for the both of us). That is how I use inspiration; I try to not copy the project verbatim, but add my own spin.  If someone else has tried and failed or succeeded, you can always learn from their process and make it your own. Ready to see an almost-but-basically-finished gym?

Boring, a little. But we’ve certainly come a looong way from this:

Just a few finishing touches left, which are low priority at this point. If/when we get around to them, we’ll let you know!