Posts Tagged ‘Paint

I’ve been obsessing over what color gray to paint my living room since September! Argh!!

Waaay back in September (which in blog years is like 25 years ago!) I mentioned I was trying to choose a paint color for my family room.

I added a little GIMP action to it to refresh your memory on the colors.

(10 points if you can figure out the additional color I recently added)

After I made this post I got a little sidetracked painting my foyer…

Honey Bear by Dutch Boy

…and painting and adding moulding to my piano room…

Route 66 by Dutch Boy

Now that I’m finished with those rooms, I’m ready to paint my family room and get those silly sample stripes off my wall.

So, what gray color did I end up deciding on?

Well, I wish I could choose a paint color that easily! I get hives trying to choose a paint color.

I pretty much decided on Bonsi from Valspar based off House*Tweakings wall color.

BUT then I saw Decor Chick’s new office and she used Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray.

After that I was given an opportunity to review some Dutch Boy paint. One of the colors I chose (based off a sample room online) was called Route 66, which I used for the piano room. (This is a beautiful rich creamy color that I adore, but am not sure it’s exactly right for my family room.)

Can you see why this gets me all stressed out?!

So I was really torn between these three grays, and then to add insult to injury I found a new blog last week called 7th House on the Left. She used Martha Stewart’s Cobblestone.

This may seem silly to some, but for me, picking paint colors is about as painful, if not more, than childbirth.

I may have an eye for crafts and home renovations, but something that should be a simple task like choosing a wall color sends me into a heart-racing sweat panic like no other.

And then to throw a monkey wrench to my hyperventilating that almost hospitalized me, 7th House on the Left had to go and throw out another gray that was just beyond gorgeous.

This gray is called Slate by Restoration Hardware.

Who even knew Restoration Hardware carried paint? It was news to me! I drove over there quicker than a hot potato and got, you guessed it, one of every single chip they had, as well as a mini sample of the Slate.

So, that’s where I’m at.

I went back to the drawing board and pulled out all my grays.

I apparently collect color swatches like my boy collects legos.

I quickly weeded out a bunch and narrowed it down to this:

Still way too many colors, but I’m making progress.

The new gray I choose for the family room has a few requirements. It has to coordinate with the dutch boy paint I’ve already used (Honey Bear & Route 66), it has to have tan undertones so it will match my couch, and it has to still look gray, not blue, or purple, or green. Oh, and it had to match the Slate by Restoration Hardware because after I saw 7th House on the Left‘s master bedroom & office in this color, I knew I was going to use it as an accent color in the family room as well as THE COLOR for my dining room.

So, the new gray has to look good with these colors:

I threw out the Mindful Gray by Sherwin Williams and the Cobblestone by Martha Stewart and instead added Bedford Gray by Martha Stewart to the mix. The Bedford Gray seemed to be less mauve-ish and was an almost identical match to the Route 66. (It doesn’t look like a match in this photo, but it is very close IRL.)

In the end, after MUCH obsessing (I’m talking, obsessing over this for 4 months straight!), I finally chose Bedford Gray by Martha Stewart Living.

Can you even believe that I actually picked one?! I still can’t believe it myself.

It was painful, but so worth it. I’m thrilled that I have a color chosen and now I’m ready and rearin’ to paint!

I’ll show you some pics of the room as soon as I slap some paint up on the walls.

So, have you used gray paint for your house? I’d love to see it if you have a link to pictures!

This is our “piano” room.

Technically it’s the formal living room, but that sounds so stuffy, plus the only real reason for this room is to house our piano, so we just call it the piano room.

When I wrote out the title, “formal living “piano” room makeover” For some reason I just thought of all those kids from Jersey Shore who have names like Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino or Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. Like my formal living room is a wanna-be gangster from Joizee. I guess I’ve been watching too many reruns of The Soporanos lately.

So anyway, whatever it’s name, the room needs a makeover. Well, I guess my entire house needs a makeover. I really want to paint my family room but I have two extra cans of paint left from my Dutch Boy Review and I purposely chose them for this particular room, so I figured I should just go ahead and get ‘er done already.

Here’s a quick mock-up of the room after I attacked it with GIMP.

This is the overall basic plan for the walls, but the furniture is still up in the air.

I’m keeping the piano in the room and I’m probably going to paint it white (that is still somewhat undecided) but as for the rest of the furniture as well as the placement of the furniture, I’d LOVE your input. This room is kind of small and awkward and I just can’t seem to get any furniture to fit well in here.

Okay, so the first thing I did was unload the room of all the crap and I removed the blinds.

I left the piano because it’s heavy and the foot on it is messed up so I don’t like moving it, so I just scooted it out away from the wall and covered it.

I found these thin crappy painters tarps at the Dollar Tree (for, you guessed it – a dollar!) but they got the job done just fine.

I covered the piano and floor with painters plastic, drop cloths, and tarps. Pretty much whatever I could find.

Then I removed all the plate covers in the room.

As for painting, the Dutch Boy paint is great paint, but the walls in this room are DARK and my Dutch Boy color I’ve chosen is a light gray so I decided to prime the walls first.

This Zinsser Primer worked really well, but it stinks and I hate priming walls!!

So anyway, after a long day of painting, I’m finally done and my walls are primed.

I took this picture mid-way through just to show you the difference between one coat and two coats of primer. The lighter patchy section on the left is after one coat and the thicker more even section on the right is after two coats. Also, priming the walls is torture because the walls just soak up so much that I had to refill my roller about 3x more frequently then when I paint. I’m so glad I’m done with this part of the process.

Next on my list is to paint the top 2/3rds of the room with my Dutch Boy gray paint. I’ll show you the color and the name of the paint in my next post about the room.

Once the gray is painted I need to mould out the windows, hang the chair rail, hang the crown moulding, and then cut and attach all my boxes for under the chair rail. From there I’ll caulk all the moulding and finally paint it all with high gloss white paint.

At that point the bones of the room will be finished and I can start hanging window treatments and shopping for new furniture. I may give a few of my accessories a fun bright coat of spray paint to make them pop, and of course I still need to tackle painting the piano.

This should be a fun several weeks ahead!

UPDATES TO THIS POST:
Phase 2
Phase 3

Dutch Boy Paints emailed me about a month and a half ago and offered to send me four gallons of paint to try and review on my blog.

Do *I* want four gallons of FREE paint? Sign me up!

They sent me a color deck so I could select my colors.

(Image borrowed from A Design Story)

Oh my oh my. I don’t think I’ve ever been SO INDECISIVE in my entire life! What room should I paint? What color should I pick? Should I get a few different colors? I hemmed and hawed for at least a week or more. I’m sure Dutch Boy was wondering what on earth they’d gotten themselves into!

I went to the Dutch Boy Paints website and selected their Inspiration Gallery where I saw this picture:

They had me at Foyer and Honey Bear.

I’m usually so “safe” when it comes to paint, but I thought I’d go out on a limb and try out yellow for my entry way. The official color is “Honey Bear” and I ordered it in Satin finish.

I was like a kid in a candy store the day they arrived!

First off, these paint cans are off the hook. I mean, seriously look at them! They have a pour handle on the side of the container, a handle on the top to carry, and they are plastic!

And then I opened one of them up to check out my new color when I discovered a POUR SPOUT inside the lid.

Srsly? Why oh why aren’t ALL paint brands packaged this way? Dutch Boy had my heart just with the paint container alone.

Here’s my foyer/entry way that I was going to test out my new paint on:

Basic builder beige. And you can’t really tell here but these walls are dirty and disgusting! I’ll show you a picture at the end of this post with a close-up of these disgusting filthy walls.

So I started to paint…

This paint goes on great. It’s smooth and thick and coats really well. And the best part? IT DOESN’T STINK! It’s got this Arm & Hammer action going on which eliminates that horrible migraine-induced-high-on-fumes headache I usually sport when I’m painting.

Here’s a close-up after only ONE coat of paint. ONE COAT people!

I did paint two coats though just to be “safe”.

And “after” both my coats of paint:

I’m sure this is solely because of the color choice, but I LOVE THIS COLOR. During the afternoon it looks bright yellow, in the morning it looks pale buttery yellow, and at night I swear it looks beige. It is such a beautiful color and will look even better when I get those other two rooms you see painted a light gray.

One reason I chose yellow is because I’m planning on painting the majority of my house a gray color with yellow accents, so I figured a yellow entry way would really work well with the rest of my color scheme. (You can see my indecisiveness about the gray on this post.)

I’m still not completely finished. I have to rehang all my decor and I have to paint that gawd-awful purple room (I mention it in this post under Dining Room) and the other room a gray shade. This yellow already looks so fabulous, I can hardly wait to see it up against the gray!

Oh, and one more teensy-tiny detail I forgot to mention… I still need to actually finish painting my entry way!

I couldn’t reach because it’s a two story foyer, and I’m TERRIFIED of heights, so I have to wait until my husband will climb up there and paint for me, or until I cave and hire a painter guy to come finish it for me (probably the latter).

And now for the much anticipated side-by-side Before & After comparison.

This is one photo. I took a picture of the corner wall where the staircase starts. Now I REALLY need to paint the stairway. It is so grotesque!

Yikes. Yup, that “before” section is how the entire foyer looked before I painted it. Gross!

So, to sum up, I LOVE this Dutch Boy paint. While researching about Dutch Boy for this post I realized they are owned by Sherwin Williams. No wonder the paint is such top notch quality. Sherwin Williams and me are tight, but I might have to start having an affair on Sherwin with the cute little Dutch Boy.