Family (Room) Painting

Well, after months, (nearly 3 months, actually) of debating on what color to paint our family room, we finally got it together and agreed on a color. And it was rather ironic how we had been battling about colors for these months and it took us all of about 30 seconds to BOTH agree.

Before we had even moved in, we had decided to go with a golden/yellow for the kitchen. That room was easy, peasy. I picked out a color, bought a sample, put it on the wall and we both loved it. Okay, I loved it right away and he thought maybe it was going to be too dark. But, he trusted me and it turned out perfect. We love it (even though I later read an article that claimed yellow on walls can cause one to feel annoyed or agitated).

And for the Family Room, we had decided to go one shade darker than the yellow we chose for the kitchen. Well, that DID NOT go as easy!! I tried the first darker shade...yuck! I tried another darker shade from a different swatch...yuck! I was not happy with any of these colors. So, we thought maybe something more neutral, like a tan. So, I picked a few swatches for us to choose from. I liked a couple in particular, but he thought they were too dark. So, I went to another swatch. Knowing my husband would think they one I really wanted was too dark, I went one shade lighter. I should have know that in actuality, he would then pick one shade lighter than what I suggested, so I should have done with my original color as my suggestion in the first place. Because now I've ended up with a color two shades lighter than what I wanted. After a few minutes of back and forth on the tan colors, I picked up a swatch that I had just grabbed at the last minute. It was more of the greenish tans. I put the swatch on the wall and said what about this color...and in less than 2 seconds, he says "I like that...a lot". We put it next to the yellow in the kitchen ...check. We compared it to our sofa...check. We looked at it next to the rug...check. So after three months of indecisiveness, we chose a color in about 30 seconds!!

I have to admit I was a little fearful of how it would turn out, since we were just going with our gut and not trying out a sample of it on the walls first. This always makes me nervous. But now I am learning that the small (even though they ar 3' x 3') swatches of paint that you put on your wall as samples, do not give a very good indication of what the entire room will look like when finished.

We moved into the house planning to hire a crew to come in and do all our painting in one day. We couldn't seem to get everything in order/unpacked quickly enough, so on a whim one Sunday afternoon, we decided to paint the kitchen. I can't say that it looks as good as it would have we paid someone to do it...but for the amout of money we saved by doing it ourselves, I am just as happy! And...my boys got to get their playset MUCH earlier. Nope...it isn't done as quickly as I had hoped, but there really is a lot of satisfaction in looking at the walls and seeing how great it makes the house look and knowing that we did it all on our own! Hopefully everyone else thinks it looks as good as we do!

We now have two rooms down that we LOVE. And...I can't wait to do more...Powder Room, Boys' Bedrooms, our master bed/bath (probably in that order). I bought an awesome chocolate/espress brown color for our powder room that I am SO excited about. Again...another whim and no trying it out first, so I hope it turns out like I am hoping. The boys room will be an adventure, as I am planning to do a stripe in each room. I did this in Texas and my OCD really got the best of me, as I wanted that stripe to be perfect and sat on a stool in Tyler's nursery for nearly a week with a tiny artist paint brush touching up the stripe. Hopefully the fact that we don't have textured walls here and that I have done this before and now know that the tape REALLY needs to be pushed down tightly will help make this a slightly easier task!

Even Tyler helped.

It's hard to get a good idea of what the color really looks like.
It is called Ecru and is kind of a greenish taupe?

Kitchen wall/Family Room wall
In this picture, the family room wall looks much more brown than it actually is.