I’m Blue Da Ba De Da Ba Die…. You know, like the song.
OK, so that’s a bit dramatic. I’m not blue, nor have I ever been. But my house? Well, that’s another story.
This weekend Scott and I spent a large chunk of time picking out paint colors then tackling the whole first level of the house. Since we want to start installing the hardwoods this weekend, we’d rather not have to worry about dripping paint on our new floors. So we pushed ourselves to get it done.
We wanted a shade of gray with a light blue undertone. We bought some samples, slapped them up on the wall, and chose our fave: Whitestone by Benjamin Moore. We even made sure to see it in both the night AND day to ensure we really liked the color. When we came back on Saturday AM, we still liked it as much as the night before, so we purchased 2 gallons and got started.
Our swatches. Whitestone is the one labeled “W”. For later reference, Coventry Gray is the one labeled “HC”
We started painting at sunset and busted out the whole first floor. Living room, hallway, kitchen, dining, and around the stairs. It took…awhile. But as we looked at our new paint color (at 9pm) we LOVED it–it was a perfect light gray and made all of our work seem like it was worth it!
The first coat after night one. Sigh. Hindsight is 20/20
This was all the light we had in the living room, but even now, all I see is blue.
The next day i was so, so eager to run over to our new house and put the second coat on. But once I opened the door, I realized we had made a terrible mistake.
Our house was blue. Like, baby blue. And with the light spots from the first coat, it looked like fluffy blue clouds had been painted on every wall of our first floor. We tried for about .8 seconds to like it (since it was so much work–not to mention money! Benny M. ain’t cheap!) but then faced reality–we had to start over. We wound up picking out Coventry Gray (check it out here) which is humorous, because while it was one of our original contenders, we wrote it off for being “too dark”. Hahaha.
The rest of the story is kind of boring (went back to the paint store, picked out a better color, re-painted) but as we go tonight to finish up the downstairs paint, this will now be 4th time I’ve had to edge and cut-in every nook and cranny. Every window, every outlet. Every door frame, smoke detector, and corner on that first floor.
Lessons learned from this debacle:
- Paint larger swatches. While we did make sure to paint samples on every wall, we painted smaller ones so we weren’t able to get a feel for the whole room color.
- When you pick a fave, paint it on the wall by itself. I think our decision was heavily influenced by the other samples on the wall . Next to the others, Whitestone looked the truest gray (others pulled purple, green, or brown) but had we painted it on the wall by its lonesome, it’s likely we would have seen the blue right away.
- Maybe you shouldn’t paint the ENTIRE HOUSE in the dark. Stop at one room (as tempting as it may be if you’re under a tight timeline, like us) and wait to see how you like it in the light before doing the rest of the house. We could have saved ourselves hours of work if we had just called it a night early. It doesn’t mean you can’t paint at night–just be sure that you’re in love with the colors before you continue on.
- Primer matters. When we went to paint the new coat of paint directly over the old one, Scott noticed that it was taking WAY more paint. This was fine for us color-wise, but I did realize that priming is more than just covering up old paint. It really did prep the walls and help the paint go on much smoother, using less of it.
I’ll share pics of the new color (along with what the blue clouds looked like in the daylight) once we get the second coat up–it’ll make a fun beginning, middle, end shot :). In terms of painting, we’ve still got the ceilings to do before we can install the floors this weekend, and at some point we’ve still gotta paint the master bedroom and put the second coat up in my office. I swear it never ends…!
The Ocean in a Drop 