Condo Update: 50 Shades of Gray…and Coral

So, on my do to for a while now has been to update the paint in my house. The reason for my complete and total avoidance of painting is threefold:

1. It’s expensive. I don’t mean just the paint, which can get up to $40 a gallon for certain paint and primer combos, but the supplies as well. Rollers, edgers, plastic drop cloths, painters tape, brushes, paint remover (in some cases), and paint trays just to name a few.
2. It’s exhausting. It is so time consuming! For me, the inexperienced painter, it can take me 2 hours just to prep the room. Then maybe an additional 3-5 hours of actual painting depending on the size of the room and color of the paint. Not to mention the physical toll it takes on you.
3. Finally, I tend to get buyers remorse. And buyers remorse for painting a house is so much worse when you know you have to repeat steps 1 and 2. The last space I painted was my old apartment. We painted every room in the place except the hallway, closets, and my bathroom. It was a bad choice. That many colors (seven!) in a 700 square foot, two bedroom apartment…..there are really no words. Live and learn I guess.

Wow, I really should never attempt a career in trying to convince people to paint their homes.

After that, I swore off painting. I think I might have said something along the lines of “Mark my words, I’ll never paint a room on my own ever again! I’ll hire someone next time.” Well, sometimes you’re just plain wrong. If you haven’t gathered by now I was talked into painting the upstairs bedrooms by my wonderful roommate, Ryli. I know that I’ve had some long posts for you guys lately and I think this might be a good one to break up into 2 posts.

The last time you saw my room was around the time of the pinterest challenge. Since the initial move in, I’ve hung a few pictures on the walls, and my mom was kind enough to install a reclaimed wood shelf on my wall. Other than that, I’ve be holding back somewhat I feel on decorating.

Another reason I was resistant to painting my bedroom, that I might as well add since I’m apparently intent on having a negative attitude on painting, is my ceilings. Anyone care to guess how high they are? If you guessed sixteen feet your are dead right (and possibly a stalker). Sixteen feet though, that is literally three of me standing on top of each other, and we’d have to each have four inch high “snooki poofs” in our hair to make up sixteen feet. I think you can understand my hesitation.

I just remember looking up at that ledge thinking…”How in the world am I going to get up there?”

Alright enough whining, lets get down to brass tacks. Saturday morning, Ryli and I woke up and went to Home Depot with Ryli’s Dad. You could say we got a late start, by the time we went to grab a bite before our manual labor began, picked out our supplies and paint colors (possible foreshadowing here) it was about 4:00 pm when we started prepping. We painted her room that night and I’m going to be completely vague and save those details for another post.

Sunday was my designated painting day and we started a little bit earlier, 2:00 pm this time. We pushed all my furniture to the center and draped everything in plastic.

I chose two colors. A gray and a coral. Did I do any test swatches before? Nope. Just marched straight up to home depot, picked out a gray and coral that I liked, ordered two gallons, and headed home. I chose Burnished Metal and Blushing Apricot by Behr, the gray was meant for the main walls of my room and the coral was intended for the window nook wall as a fun pop of color.

Almost immediately after I began rolling the paint on my wall I realized it had much more of a blue hue then I expected. “Too little to late,” “shame on me,” and “it’s your own fault” are just a few of the phrases that ran through my mind, but more on than in a minute. I proceeded onward with the paint. I figured I should at least let it grow  on me before I made some silly another silly snap decision. We painted the gray all evening and almost finished. There’s still a couple spots that need a second coat and the ceiling edge needs some love. Plus, I need a bigger ladder, go figure.

You can see in this picture I still have about one or two feet of wall space that I couldn’t reach.

Those spots on the wall in the pictures are mostly sun spots, at least the really bright ones.

I’m planning on tackling the rest of the painting this coming Friday night or Sunday afternoon. I’ll need to do trim touch-ups, spot touch-ups, finish the top of the walls that I wasn’t able to reach last weekend, and I’m going to paint the nook. After painting the gray and it coming out a little blue, I have now decided to second guess my coral color choice. It’s much more baby pink than I thought and I really want it to pop off of the wall. Due to this, I went to Home Depot on Tuesday (with my color guru Christi, who helps me with tons of color choices like on this table) and we picked out two more corals, much more bold than the first. They’re called Cool Lava, and Juicy Passionfruit. I’m still trying to decide which paint color to choose. Thoughts?

I’m definitely not a fan of the blushing apricot anymore, but I don’t know about the other two, I keep going back and fourth. I’ve been using the behr preview app to try visualize these colors in my room. I also am keeping in mind I have a lot of deep purple accents in the house and want to factor that into my decision.

Here’s a shot of the purple accents so you don’t have to scroll up again to see them.

Here’s some screen shots of a visualization of all the colors together, I added purple to the floor since the app wouldn’t let me change the color of the sheets. This top screen shot I used Cool Lava.

This one is showing the Juicy Passionfruit.

Oh my gosh, I can’t wait until all this painting is done. The house is a total mess because of it and I’m sick of it. Come Friday night, it’s on.

Can’t you just visualize that window nook wall painted all bright and bold coral with some really billowy white window treatments to soften it up? Maybe I should go back and paint bigger swatches?

Please share your opinion! Do we have any Juicy Passionfruit fans out there? Cool Lava? Maybe you’re an underdog fan and are hoping I’ll go back to the Blushing Apricot? Comment below to let me know!