I Can't Stop Painting...

April 2014

 

This year seems to be the year of painting everything.  This time I decided to paint the guest room.  Back in the winter,  I painted the panelling in the room white.  Since there was only panelling on two walls, this left two walls unpainted.  These walls were plaster and had several damaged areas that we had not fixed.  One location was the area around the new wall light the other area was some existing  damage below the South window that we had avoided for three years.  Not having the money or energy to do a full skim coat of the the walls,  I decided to try and fix these areas as best I could.  I chipped away any plaster that was loose and then over the course of several days patched and sanded the areas back.  
  

I think I did a pretty good job, although as I worked I kept noticing more areas with cracks, dents, and dimples. If we stay in the house long term we will probably have to have the plaster professionally repaired, but since this is our guest room I patched what I could and primed the areas.  As you will noticed the room was a light butternut squash color.  Our roommate picked out the color and we liked it, however, we never kept the swatch and had no idea what it was.  We either had to try and color match the existing color or paint it an entirely new color.

 

The decision to go with a new color hinged on a gift. For our wedding, a family friend of Josh's gave us a large beautiful watercolor they had painted.  We loved the painting but walking through our house we were having a hard time finding a wall that was big enough to work with the painting.  Honestly, there was only one wall in the house where it would truly work and it was in the guest room above the dresser.   We decided to take down our current piece of art (which we like, but holds no sentimental value).  The only issue was the watercolor really didn't work with the rooms orange color.
 

 

We decided to try and pull out the muted colors in the watercolor by painting the wall a dark color.  We felt the room could handle going dark given the amount of white trim, panelling on two walls, and the large window and closet to break up the space.  We tried several dark blue grays from Benjamin Moore.  In the end, we choose Lead Gray. I went out and bought a gallon and set about painting the space.

Once again, our lighting caused the color to come out way more blue then we were expecting.  It reads a deep navy and not so much gray.  But when we put the watercolor up against it- we were completely sold. 

 

This was probably our most saturated color to date and no matter how good frog tape is, there was a fair amount of touch up.  The bold color against the white requires a perfect line, so I spent an afternoon with a mini brush touching up the wood work and ceiling.  

 

The room has a bit of a nautical feel with the blue and white, so I took the vibe and brought our large ship painting from the stairwell and put it in the room.  Perfect fit!  Josh hung the piece and I cleaned the room.  I think we can call this room almost complete.