Painting a Nook

I have confession to make: I dreaded painting our dining room nook that doubled as a laundry zone. I painted one living room wall to correspond with the the hall and dining room color (gotta love town homes being one long open room), but I stopped at the nook. For FOUR months. Ugh.

Today, we summoned some daring and Daniel cleaned our living room carpet and filled nail holes from our gallery wall of pictures I decided to remove, while I tackled the nook. Oh, that nook.

Three hours later … I feel extremely proud of myself and can’t stop staring lovingly at the soft dove gray/beige color that looks quietly stunning against the white trim. Ahhhhhhhh. Yes. That is why I wanted to do this.

And just to remember just how far we’ve come … here’s a progression from the past seven months:

I’ve got to say, the hardest part was getting past my reluctance to do the trim and cutting in. I was terrified I’d mess it up, but I didn’t. In fact, I think I did a pretty good job for an amateur, and my artist brushes came in handy for the tiny spots! I don’t have wallpaper up in between the shelves as I had initially considered adding, but that’s okay; this is good as is.

How to Paint a High Stairwell

I’ve been worrying about our painting. There’s been a lag in the process due to the weather in Middle Tennessee (tornado/rainy season), but that’s not what is really worrying me. What I’m most concerned about is my stairwell. It is tall and narrow and mocks me. I don’t want to make big mistakes on that stairwell … after all, I rent, and I am striving to leave the house in better condition than I found it. The color we’ve chosen is a good neutral that will brighten up the space and be a good backdrop for many different styles of design, should the new renters (way in the future whenever we move out to our own home) have different tastes from us. Plus, it will cover up the dingy paint that has seen years of wear and tear.

So, what’s the big deal? I could just leave the stairwell the color it is, right? Wrong. Our home has an open floor plan. Each room runs into the other, including the stairwell space. Uh oh.

So I did a little research, and I found a helpful video over at Renovate Your World that gave me more confidence that we could do this. That, plus reading on contractor’s forum that I can avoid getting the carpet messy when I cut in around the base of each stair (no baseboard!) simply by either using duct tape on the edges to pull the carpet fibers away from the wall, or just using a large metal (clean) spackle knife to push down the fibers while cutting in with a good paintbrush. My two biggest fears solved. Hooray!

I’m Scared This Paint is Too Light!

I just realized this post had been scheduled but it didn’t ever catch … sorry!

When you’re in the middle of organization projects, sometimes a room gets sacrificed as the catch-all of piles of things that need homes but don’t yet have them. Ours was the dining room. You didn’t see this part while I was working on the nook, but now I’m exposing it in all its sad glory.

I had my reasons for shifting the sorting piles around. Remember that paint can from earlier? I couldn’t wait to test its contents out!

At first stir, I was already getting nervous. I’m aiming for a light greige. What I got was … creamy white?

I decided to paint a patch, anyway, to test it out. I’m hoping it dries darker. This is scary. I’m glad we didn’t invest in the expensive paint just to find out it was the wrong color!

Here goes nothing …

YIKES! Barely any definition between it and the white at all. Now I’m REALLY scared. Did the Home Depot paint lady use the wrong color on our chosen swatch? I decided to compare.

Well, in the picture it looks the same. But I’m still not sure. There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach I’m going to have to do another color pick.

Fortunately, the evening wasn’t lost. I did manage to clean out the dining room while we watched the Biggest Loser. Granted, now I have lots of stacks of things waiting to go upstairs, but at least they are sorted!

Man, I hope that greige works out! We chose it based on how it looked in our living room … which is really dark … please oh please oh please …

I Was Right; Greige Would Look Terrible in the Kitchen

See?

Looks like I’m going to have to figure this out. That color isn’t working with the counter top.

Oh, and by the way? It’s Sherwin Williams “6073 Perfect Greige.”

I just found that they have a nifty site where you can upload your pictures and then apply color to areas you mask off. In this case, greige.

Back to the coloring board.