Painting, painting, & more painting

Ben and I have been pretty busy the past couple of months painting various rooms in our house. I'll admit that I was a little afraid of color at first, but after seeing how much of a difference a coat of color makes to a room, I think I'm addicted.

It started out with me wanting to paint the kitchen and living room a soft yellow.....which I later found out is a lot harder than it sounds. As you can see in the picture below, I had a little bit of trouble finding the perfect yellow.

But, after making a few trips to Sherwin Williams, painting the entire room a color that I ended up hating (think "Taco Cabana" yellow), touring a couple of my mom's friends' houses, and receiving a little bit of help from some painting "experts" (a.k.a. those who have made similar painting mistakes in the past), I found the perfect color: Blonde.

Although it is not the color that I was originally going for, I love it. In fact, I love it so much that we ended up painting the entry, front room, and hallway this same color.

I painted the guest bathroom next. This project went a lot smoother than the "yellow" as I was able to use all of the skills that I had learned from the "experts". I examined the colors closely using the darker shades of the colors that I was interested in to determine which one was more green, which one was more blue, etc. I then bought a sample of the color that I liked and tried that on the walls before buying the actual paint. I realize that these "skills" might sound a lot like common sense to some of you, but they were definitely skills that I had to acquire. Sad, I know. The color that I ended up using is called Waterscape.

After spending the better portion of our weekends working on "my" painting projects, we decided to focus a little bit of energy on the garage. Ben had been wanting to paint/epoxy the garage floor to seal it, make it easier to clean, and reduce the amount of dust/dirt that gets tracked in. He had planned to use Rustoleum's Epoxy Shield, and because this particular product only comes in two colors (tan or gray), this choice was fairly easy....especially when compared to choosing between Sherwin Williams' 1,500 colors. Ben used a roller to paint on the epoxy, and I threw on the flakes to give it the "granite look" that it talks about on the packaging. All in all, I think that it looks pretty good....although I'm not too sure it resembles anything close to granite. Oh well.

Our most recent house project was to paint our bedroom. I wanted a color similar to our guest bathroom but a little more green and a little less vibrant. I decided to stick with the "neutral" palette this time (Blonde is also found on the neutral palette) and searched the turquoise-like colors for one with somewhat of a green undertone. I ended up deciding on Rainwashed (which is a bit more green in person than it appears in the pictures).

Although I thought it was a little bright at first (I have since realized that it takes me a couple of days to adjust from our original monotone Krisp Khaki walls to anything that has any type of color), I love it now. It is just the right amount of color and is very relaxing.

Next on our painting list is our bathroom. I'm not sure when we'll actually get around to tackling that project, but I will definitely keep you posted.