#149: The Episode That Made Me A Plant Lady: a house

We are sharing how our bathroom reno went from zero to fifty percent (that’ll make more sense when you hear what we did) and how we gained a ton of insight about the right layout and the right size for the vanity, shower, tub, etc. Also… the houseplant struggle is real, so we asked plant expert Carmeon Hamilton everything we have ever hoped to know about how to keep inside greenery alive (and glad!). She shared her go-to straightforward plants for beginners and even laid out when to water, re-pot, and fertilize your indoor greenery (we were like: wait, we should be fertilizing?!?). Plus, we are shouting out a especially handy multipurpose tool that we enjoyed so much we picked up two of them. And there was a surprise twist in our Paint of the Year predictions that even we did not believe at first.

You can also find this episode on your go-to podcast listening app, like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and Spotify.

What is New

First, if you missed our post a couple of weeks ago about how we partially gutted our bathroom you can check it out here (and see what a large difference the new view makes!).
We certainly enjoy the idea of using classic tiles but laying them in interesting ways
And now that the layout has become crystal clear to us, we felt confident ordering some of the big items in the room – like the tub, the toilet, and the big double vanity that is going to fit perfectly (we are likely going to paint it a muted gray-brown like the inspiration photo).

The toilet is the same one we have had in our downstairs powder room for years now, and we enjoy how stately it looks (if a toilet can be called stately). It feels fairly momentous to at last be upgrading another one in our house. Soon we will be 2 for 3!

Paints of the Year

So as many of you saw, we were dead wrong on the guess we made in Episode #147 about Sherwin-Williams’ 2020 Paint of the Year. It was neither deep brown nor a forest green, but instead a dark navy blue called Naval.
However… it turns out that Sherry’s guess of a “blush” and “peachy” light pink color that is “lighter than Millennial Pink” with “a name like First Blush or Nature’s Kiss” was nearly exactly how HGTV Home by Sherwin-Williams described their 2020 Paint of the Year: Romance.
And if you are curious to see the “muddy greeny gray, clay-like pottery color” that Sherry’s now predicting as Benjamin Moore’s Paint of the Year pick (even though I refuse to officially allow this add-on guess), you can check out the green mug in the first image of this Apartment Therapy article.

Carmeon Hamilton’s Plant Parenting Pointers

First off, be sure to check out Carmeon’s book with more pointers and advice. It is called Nubi’s Guide to Plant Parenting and it is only $11 for the e-book version and $16 for the printed copy.
You can also learn more about her design work on her website or by following her on Instagram. She’s @carmeon.hamilton.
Now, to recap some of Carmeon’s advice: her 3 beginner plants that she recommends as especially straightforward to take care of (which also tolerate a variety of low lighting situations) were the (1) pothos, (2) snake plant, and (3) ZZ plant. Update: all of these can be toxic to pets, so be sure to check on things like that if you have animals who eat leaves or have access to your new plant babies!
Carmeon mentioned she prefers monstera plants over the ever-popular fiddle leaf fig. The large version shown below and linked above is $150, but here is a smaller version for $70 that comes with a seagrass basket and these $60 ones come in ceramic planters. You can also get a smaller starter plant on Amazon (simply $23) or even purchase clippings to propagate on Etsy for as little as $9!
Carmeon also has a guide on her journal for how to propagate your pothos or your monstera.
She also mentioned her recipe for getting rid of pests if you ever find them in your plants. She recommends filling a spray bottle with water, then adding a couple capfuls of Apple Cider Vinegar OR Neem Oil along with a couple drops of dish soap. Take your infested plant outside, spray it with that solution, wipe down its leaves, and it should be ready to come back inside in a few hours.
Lastly, here is the Miracle-Gro liquid that Carmeon recommends for fertilizing house plants.

We are Digging

That is the Ryobi Inflator tool that I now own two of because we realized in addition to inflating bike tires and sports balls at home in Richmond, it also works so well for blowing up floats and stuff at the beach. And while I have not personally used it to inflate my car tires – the Home Depot website itself shows it doing the job, so it is a small low-cost tool that does plenty of things.
And since there is not truly a visual for Sherry’s new practice of putting endearing photos of friends into her phone contacts along with using a heart emoji after my name, I will leave you with this Animoji reenactment of how it feels to her when I text her about mundane things like bread.

If you are looking for something we have dug in a past episode, but do not remember which show notes to click into, here is a master list of everything we have been digging from all of our past episodes. You can also see all the books we have recommended on our Book Club page.

And lastly, a big thank you to Annie Selke for sponsoring this episode. Check out her Fall 2019 collection at annieselke.com/YHL, which includes these new rug patterns seen below. And do not forget to take 15% off your order with the code YHL15.