Painting the Walls (with a lot of buts)

So my old studio/new living room, as we call it around here is finally cleaned out, painted and ready for furniture. It took forever to find a place for the junkiest junk that I had stashed in there and in fact, more than a few things still are piled on the dining room table.

Initially, I had planned to paint the upper walls the same color that I painted the side walls in my studio, a deep neutral color called Peppercorn. I was so sure that this was the right color I added two extra gallons of paint in the order at the paint store.

BUT.

Then I made the final decision on the color of the furniture, and then I found a beautiful rug and of course neither worked very well with the Peppercorn.

So I drove down to Sherwin Williams and picked out a deep brown, because now I was sure that I wanted the walls to be a dark chocolate brown. Normally I am great at picking out wall colors, when I painted the whole rest of the house, every color was right on. So I was pretty confident that the first brown I picked was the right brown.

BUT.

After I rolled it on the walls (twice, just to be sure), I noticed that it looked a bit purple at certain times of the day. I liked how dark it was but the purple/raisin/deep burgundy thing each afternoon really bugged me. So it was back to my collection of paint samples where I picked out a nice warm brown, a bit lighter than I had planned however there would be no mistaking it for burgundy or purple or anything like that.

BUT.

I was a bit concerned after I rolled it on and then even more so after it dried and it still looked disturbingly like the dog's diarrhea. At this point I had bought 6 gallons of paint and even the kids were starting to make fun of me. So I decided that a good option would be to mix the diarrhea and the deep purple color together. Doug scoffed at me, but I reminded him that I certainly know a bit about color for crying out loud! What does he think I do all day, anyway? So I mixed the two colors together until I got what I wanted. Painted the room yet again and it was so close that I even went around and even painted the edges.

BUT.

After a few days of trying to convince myself that it was right I gave it up. It was a good mix but just not quite right for the room or for the sofa, chair and rug that I ordered. Doug was out of town for a few days that week and I took that opportunity to very quietly slink back to the paint store and buy two more gallons of the darker shade of the diarrhea paint, the one we had once discussed but passed on because we thought it was too dark. I rolled paint on the walls of my old studio/new living room for the fifth time, not counting the two coats that I had done five years ago when we moved in. I did a second coat just to be sure (again) and finished up all the edges. Again. This time though:

PERFECT.

I love it. It is a beautiful warm, dark brown, somewhere between milk and dark chocolate and the rug goes perfectly with it. I have some worries about the furniture, as the fabric swatch and rug combo bothers me a bit, but there is no turning back on that one so for now I am just enjoying the wall color.

And I am also appreciating the fact that the walls in this room are only half walls because of the paneling and so one can roll all the walls in just over an hour. My wasted time seems pretty minimal when you look at it that way, don't you think? Coulda been way worse.


Oh and we had planned to replace the hollow core Home Depot style front door this fall, but that project is on hold and so I think that I will soon be painting that door to match the rest of the trim. The hunter green is just not working for me here. And by the way, anybody recognize the top painting in between the two doorways?