Get Your Paint On

Good morning and happy Tuesday!!

The up-and-at-em chipper bug has caught me.  How can it not when:

A. We just returned from a wonderful vacation.
B. The house smells like yummy cologne (thanks to our new roomy Manny!).
C. I have no obligations for a week.
D. I am actually feeling inspired to conquer my long list of to-dos... annnd
E. That instead of that list I am finally blogging.

I am very excited to recap the trip with delightful memories and pics, but sadly I left the camera 1,600 miles away so that post will just have to wait. Instead I will finally share the biggest thing we've done in the past few months. I've been meaning to put this up since May, but that means going through pictures, which means taking said pictures, which means getting the right light (yeah... I try, albeit unsuccessfully), which starts with cleaning. And that whole process apparently alluded me for quite some time. But here I am, three months later, sharing the simple, yet oh so gratifying, project that we conquered. We painted! And I feel like we did it right. Even though officially we aren't finished (booo to trim). But so it goes.

I've wanted to paint the main area since I moved in. It was a tired looking white that just made the whole space feel blah. We both loved the idea of a cooler neutral, so we decided to try to find a gray that was virtually the color of the white paint when shadowed.

It began with samples colors. This is something I've never committed to doing before, but for an extra ten bucks was sooo worth it. All were Behr Premium Plus Ultra and the four colors are as follows:

Top to bottom:

Manhattan Mist (760E-2)

Burnished Clay (UL260-12)

Subtle Touch (790E-1)

Graceful Gray (UL260-10)

And another look:

Graceful Gray, Manhattan Mist, Subtle Touch, Burnished Clay

We wanted to see how they would look near the floor since ours has a fairly red finish. We have hopes and plans to change that in the future, but we also don't want to live with some huge clash until then. Manhattan Mist was immediately out since it was too blue, as was Subtle Touch for being, well, too subtle. So we were down to Graceful Gray, which had a slight green to it, and Burnished Clay. We loved Graceful Gray, but I had worries that it might be too dark, so we slapped on some more.

All was looking snazzy so away we hopped on over to Home Depot and grabbed two gallons of Graceful Gray. And so followed came the "fun" stuff. Jamming out to "Rock Lobster" and the occasional Depeche Mode definitely kept us going.

And after hours of painting, an extra gallon of paint, three rollers, and some intense concentration on doing the edge work by moi (I was previously deemed unfit for precision work, so I mustered all the focus I had to finish what remained), we were left with a beautifully painted living room. And let's just say some boogying and cartwheeling ensued. Sometimes the mister is simply uncontrollable. :)

So let's take a gander at some before and afters:

Living Room Before

Living Room After

Living Room After

Fireplace Before

Fireplace After

Wall Before

Wall After

Kitchen Wall Before

Kitchen Wall After

So it definitely is a subtle change, especially in pictures. But in person it is just enough contrast to really freshen things up. Hopefully my picture taking abilities will improve by the next post, or at least I'll remember to get befores and afters in the same spot...

Time to go wash some dogs, do some shopping, and show congress how budgets are made!

LIVE THE MURRAYED LIFE

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