Saturday, September 1, 2012

Making Mistakes

Picking paint colors is hard. Very hard. Way harder than it looks. My first post about the living room referred to the slight battle over color palate that occurred in Chez JTE. Blue-gray, said Tracie. Saturated bold color, said J. (Okay, really he said "I want it cozy! Like a cave!)

Our solution was to grab every paint chip that slightly appealed to either of us. After taping a few to the walls, I conceded that J might-might-have a point. Our little home is light filled...except for the living/dining room. The lovely double window actually gets very little light because of the porch roof over it. Add in the window treatments (a term I despise) needed for privacy (lots of tourists on our street who probably don't want to see The T&J Show when they walk past) and the room loses even more light. The light colors I favored looked dingy and dull in our natural light starved room, while Jeremy's dark colors made it look moody, sophisticated purposeful.

Picture from Desire to Inspire
Looking at pictures like this one tilted me towards the dark and dramatic side.

True confession, I despise our dark leather sofa. It came with my husband, whom I do love, so I put it up with it. I love how in the dark walls absorb the dark sofa and make the whole room look so well thought out and sophisticated.

I also fell for this picture.
From here

It's just so dramatic and rich looking.

So off we went to Home Depot, where we picked up a tester of Martha Stewart's Chocolate Truffle. Oh. My. God.

This is the sample. Yes, it looked this bad. No, actually, it looked worse. Why did I take the picture from that insane angle? No idea. The paint transformed our living space into where light came to die. And instead of absorbing the sofa...it was like the sofa won! It took over my entire living room.

We lived with it for awhile, as J at first wanted to defend its qualities (cavelike doesn't, really, qualify as a plus, bless his heart). At the end, he had to admit it wasn't working. So we primed over the chocolate splotches (lesson learned, paint on poster board from now on). It took awhile and some more samples but we finally settled on Martha Stewart's Burlap colormatched to Sherwin Williams.


We paid for our own paint and have no affiliation with Sherwin Williams, so this is a totally unbiased review, but I loved this paint! It was so creamy and we had no drips. Zero. Nada. And the coverage, considering old walls and fairly deep color, was amazing. I can't recommended it enough. Loved it. Looking forward to their next sale so we can buy some more paint!

This is still a fairly deep color, but it looks fantastic with our dark brown leather sofa. It's exactly what I wanted chocolate truffle to do.

So picking paint colors...sometimes the second time is the charm.

1 comment:

  1. I know EXACTLY wher eyou guys are coming from. The Bedroom at the Casablanca had the windows in a weird place. So wheni moved in I painted the walls a color I had special mixed called "Radio City Red" (because I love Radio City Music Hall in NY)it was also at this time I was going to spray paint teh ceiling gold...yeah let that settle in for a minuet, i'll wait. I never got around to painting the ceiling, but for 2 years the bedroom/den was BLOOD RED. Then one day, by accident I found the previous owners had drywalled over 2 windows (glass still in them!) on the west wall of the room. I cut the dry wall out and it let in SO MUCH light and that room took a new direction. I painted it turquoise, and i finally got my "spray painted gold" in a 2 inch stripe that runs at the top of one wall. The Den is provably my favorite, and most thought out room in the whole Casablanca.

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