Down with Brown – Living Room Edition

This post is waaay overdue since the living room was repainted at the beginning of April. Scott was out of town for work and I was by myself and looking for something to do. I have been dragging my feet taking the “after” photos since not quite everything was done. We still needed a curtain rod over the front windows and I needed to paint the interior side of the front door & the coat closet door.

BUT, since the weather around here has been nice and warm on some days and then makes a 30 degree swing on others, I didn’t think we should be taking down our front door for painting. So, we waited … and waited. Until this weekend.

Spoiler Alert: The doors still aren’t painted, but we did buy a new curtain rod and installed that. So that was good enough for me!

Before we get to all the good stuff, let’s take a little walk down Picking-out-a-paint-color Lane. This is always the hardest part for me, especially since the majority of the house is already done, so we have to be a little cautious with choosing a color so that it jives with the rest of the house.

The kitchen, dining room, hallway and music room are all painted with Moonshine (#1). Although we like this color, we wanted something a little darker, moodier, but not brown, and not blue-ish, but more gray-ish and the list goes on and on…

So, after some perusing, I came across Stonington Gray (#2). However, once I got the paint swatch in the house I could already tell it was going to be a little too gray-blue-ish and would feel a little cool. I wanted a warm gray … if that makes any sense.

I started to feel a little annoyed, so I started looking through some HGTV Sherwin-Williams color collections. We like the Coastal Cool and Traditional Twist collections. Once I opened the Traditional Twist collection, it was crazy how many of those colors we already had in our living room:

Indigo Batik – The navy stripe in our new artwork on the walls
Foothills – An amazingly true match to our couch (I never thought our couch was brown)
Antiquarian Brown – Some of the caramel highlights in our wood floors matched this
Latte – this was the color on the walls I wanted to get rid of !!!!!

So, the only gray-ish color on that pallet was Collonade Gray. I just bit the bullet and bought a sample quart. Once I painted it on the walls, it was still too-blue. I was mad! I was like, “How can this NOT work? The color card said it would!”

I resorted to more web searches and came across some blog (I can’t remember who it was) but she had this whole blog post on choosing Collonade Gray, but then for some reason she didn’t like it and just went with a Lowe’s color called “Bonsai”. I don’t know how often God intervenes in home decorating, but I felt like this was a sign or something. Haha!

I called my mom and asked her advice and she just told me to go for it. I think she could sense how frustrated I was. (It’s just a paint color, Allie! Sheesh!) I bought a couple gallons and painted my little heart out. In the Before/After photos you can’t tell too much of a difference, but believe me … it’s perfect.

So, we started with “Latte” and ended with “Bonsai”:

Oh and funny story not related, but kind-of: Scott LOVES bonsais. You know, the little mini-trees that look full grown? Yes. We have like three of them at the house. So, this color was even more perfect. 🙂

Anywho, here’s all our before and afters. Updates include:

– New pillowcases
– New rug (well … there wasn’t a rug there to begin with)
– New curtains & new curtain rod (the old one was one of those track-thingies)
– New Artwork
– Crown moulding, baseboards and trim got a couple coats of white paint

We absolutely LOVE being in this room now. All the colors just work. I’m also not embarrassed to have people over and everything look all wompy … especially the old artwork on the wall … I hated that thing.

So, this means that almost all the rooms in the house have been painted. When we moved in, every room had been painted “Latte”. It just wasn’t our jam. So, now our color palette for the house looks like this:

We are slowly getting to the end of the major updates for the house. The music room is now the most unfinished since all I did was paint it and that was it. It still needs artwork up on the walls and the trim desperately needs to be painted. I’m also trying to brainstorm ideas for the wall with the guitars. I want to do something fun, but don’t want it looking disastrous. I am open to any ideas!

Anywho, that’s it from our side of the street. Hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend!

– Allie