Feeling Kind of Gray

Nothing claims a new space to me like paint. Which is probably why I tend to jump headfirst into painting rooms, usually resulting in a lot of angst and drama. Himself has to deal with it quite frequently, and sometimes manages to deter me for awhile from rushing into things, but there are times when I insist, and he smiles and shakes his head, probably knowing how it will turn out (that is, not so well).

Rewind a few days.

Me: "I really want to get something done to the house before our next batch of guests arrive in a week. I was hoping to paint the master bedroom."
Himself: "Well, don't you think we should focus on cleaning out the ground level and making it liveable and not chaotic?"
Me: *stamping foot* "No! We're painting the bedroom this weekend!"
Himself: *sigh* "Okay. But you're just going to hate the color when we're done..."

OK, so maybe it wasn't (quite) as childish as all that. But, I'll admit, somewhat close.

I had been dreaming of gray. The walls in the current master bedroom were painted a deep dark brown by the previous owners. And while the color wasn't awful, like most of their color choices, they just didn't make sense in the space. The dark brown made the room feel like a cave and the one small window in the back didn't let nearly enough light in.

You are now entering the BatCave

I wanted to go lighter, and step outside of my comfort zone (which tend to be earth tones, browns and greens) so decided we would paint gray. Okay, so it's still a neutral, but its still a little bit scary for me. It's terribly trendy right now, but then it's just paint. So it's changeable if it bothers me too much. I was imagining a warm lighter charcoal wall with a bed piled with fluffy white linens, and some small pops of color, maybe something fun like magenta or orange. Concerned a charcoal would be too dark, we settled on a color called Samovar Silver by Sherwin Williams.

No, we're not sponsored... this stuff just rocked that much!

Painting day went better than expected. We went with the expensive Duration paint by SW, which was on sale (score!) and apparently has a built-in primer that according to the store salesclerks would cover even the darkest brown. I was skeptical, but after a coat of this stuff I was surprised to find that it was pretty much perfect, with just a few spots here and there that might necessitate touch ups. Since we had another gallon, we used it for a second coat to get a really nice even finish, and ended up with a color that I really liked. In the light of the day the gray was a soft dove color, just on the warm side of the gray family. See, I DID like the color!

A few hours later I turned on a light in the room and wanted to cry. I hated it! The warm gray had turned into a cool blueish gray, perhaps due to the artificial lights and the multitone brown carpets. Him managed to convince me not to jump right back out to the store and buy more paint, but to let it sit and see how I felt about it in a few weeks (and coincidentally, he insisted he was not going to help me repaint. Sigh.)

After pictures of the room in natural light. The walls still look somewhat blue to me.

So, here I am with a big empty bedroom with paint I'm pretty sure I hate on the walls, and I just want to repaint it but I'm trying to listen to my better half and just focus on other areas of the house. After all, we have houseguests coming in next week, and what are they going to care if the master bedroom isn't the right shade of gray? It's much better to focus my energy on making sure they don't fall over a pile of stuff on their way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

At least if I keep myself busy working on the ground level, maybe I'll stop dreaming of the perfect shade of gray.