The Dark Side

This is several weeks overdue.  But alas, so are most of my blog posts these days! 

We finally, finally, finally finished painting the formal living and dining rooms (over July 4th weekend).  These were the last 3 walls left from the initial painting we had done when we first moved in.  The glaring pink stared at me day in and day out  mocking me with their endurance.  I must say I am not sad to see them disappear. 

In case you don’t remember.  Here is the dining room before (well, before we painted, not before we started prepping):

After confirming advice from Sally, we decided that painting all three walls blue to match the blue that runs through the entryway and hallway, up the stairs and down the upstairs hallway would be overwhelming.  So, as you can see from the above picture we decided to make the large wall connecting the living and dining room an accent wall using gray.

  These were our color samples.  We originally picked the gray on the far left and confidently picked up a gallon and painted the entire wall.  Our initial reaction to our choice was mediocre at best and frustrating at worst.  The gray just didn’t do anything for us and even blended in slightly with the opposing blue walls.  I didn’t even bother taking a picture of the completed wall because I knew it wasn’t staying. 

We decided to embrace our dark side and boldly paint the wall a dark, dark gray.  So, we  headed to home depot to see if we could tint the existing paint two shades darker on the color swatch we had.  No luck.  The color we initially chose was a white base and the color we wanted to switch to called for a medium tinted base.  Adding black (or whatever they added) barely changed the color at all.  So we bit the bullet and bought a fresh gallon of the new color.  And I’m glad we did.  We painted two coats (because painting with a dark color is a lot different and harder than I’ve experienced before.  It doesn’t cover as easily and you have to make extra certain no little spots show through the layers) and now I am in love with how it turned out!  It looks so fresh, modern and put together.  I like to just sit on my sofa and look at the pretty rooms.  I worried ever so slightly that the gray would be to dark and make the room oppressive.  But it’s not because the tall ceilings, the blue walls and tons of natural light really just help the wall pop!   

I love the way the white trim pops with the dark gray.  The navy curtains pop against the light blue walls and the floors blend it all together.  Spending two days of a 3 day weekend painting was well worth the effort.

Oh, and while I was inside painting away, Brian was outside graffiti-ing  power washing our sidewalk/driveway.  But he was great and came in to help edge the top of the walls and roll the top half b/c even on a chair I could only reach up to about 8’ of these 10’ walls!

 

Overall:  Happy with the finished product.  It feels good to be bold! 

Oh, and after putting that nice graffiti on the front walkway Brian successfully broke the pull start on the power washer.  I was convinced we were going to have that announcement remain on our sidewalk welcoming all our guests for the foreseeable future.  But he was able to fix the pull start (with the help of his dad) and finish up that and the sidewalk and I must say it looks brand new.  Thanks for your tireless efforts B.Low!