Plaster and Paint, And Then Paint Again

February 2012

After our built-in's were completed we brought in a contractor to skim coat our bedroom walls.  We did this for two reasons.  The first being the room was drywall with a speckle texture which did not match the rest of the house.  The second was we had done several repairs/modifications to the walls.  There was the access panel, which added some drywall to the South wall, we had framed in the closets and added some new drywall to the North wall, and finally when we insulated the house we went ahead and added some additional insulation into the walls from the interior.  All in all, it made our walls look like a hot mess.  Some had texture, some were smooth, some had large holes. It was rough.

Over the course of two days, the contractor skimmed all of our walls and applied a rough texture that was a close match to our downstairs plaster. During this time, Josh and I worked on paint colors.  We both were on the same page with having a nice serene blue gray color in the bedroom. We thought this would go well with our vibe, and also with the existing headboard fabric and our duvet which was a mixture of blues, grays and tans.  A little before the remodel we went to a awesome bar in Seattle and when I was in the restroom I thought, this is the color I want in my bedroom. Is this weird?  Most likely.  So when I came out of the restroom I asked Josh to come take a look (which got us even weirder looks from the staff).  But they were kind enough to tell us the color was Sherwin Williams Foggy Day. Bonus!  As soon as I got home I went to Sherwin Williams and got a sample, as well as two other colors just to be safe. 

Josh and I thought the best way to work with our low sloped ceiling was to paint it the same color but in a lighter hue.  So I also picked up several shades for the ceiling.  We put our test colors on and actually felt the Foggy Day read a little too-- dare I say Foggy. So we went with a similar shade called Storm Cloud which was a bit more punchy.  We went to Miller Paint, color matched and started painting the ceilings the lighter hue of Storm Cloud and then the walls got painted. This was pretty hard work, ceilings are miserable and it tooks us one VERY long weekend to paint the entire room.  The whole time I painted I had a weird feeling.....

When we were completely done I stepped back and thought, HOLY PURPLE.  With having the color on all four sides of the room it became overwhelming.  The color which appeared to have NO purple in it from the swatch was reading like a mother-of-the-bride lavendar dress gone wrong.  I took a gulp and asked Josh what he thought.  He was silent and then admitted he too was overwhelmed by the color. We went back in forth about being able to live with it.  But in the end, we knew we would always lay in bed hating it.

So, round two:  Foggy Day (I never should have questioned) and a Bone White ceiling to match the rest of the house began.  As much as we complained it was not that bad.  The ceiling took two coats and was horrible, but the walls only took one coat since the Foggy Day was so close to Storm Cloud.   This was the first time Josh and I have ever had to repaint a room.  I am not proud of it, but it happened.  It meant a  wasted weekend and about $100 in paint.  But now the room was perfect and Foggy and we loved it.