Painting Party

This weekend I finally crossed two more household projects off my list – painting the guest bathroom and the breakfast nook. The guest bathroom painting was a spur of the moment decision. We were half way through painting the breakfast nook and realized we needed more paint and lucky for us, Sherwin-Williams was having a 25% off Memorial Day sale. So I decided 25% off was good enough reason to buy paint for the bathroom and tackle one more project. I figured I should use my worker bee (aka my mom) while she was there and willing to paint!

My original thought was to paint the bathroom a pale green, but as that might be the baby’s room color, I decided to go in a different direction. We decided on Cottage Creole – sounds so exotic doesn’t it? Well lesson #1 from this painting project was quickly learned when we opened the paint can and started painting – the color you choose at the store always looks a little different once its in your house (and it goes on lighter than it dries, which can cause for some panic while the paint is still wet and you fear you’re going to end up with a pale pink/peach bathroom). Mom and I both thought Cottage Creole would be a deeper color than it was, but were happy with the final product. I ended up with much lighter bathroom than I’d intended, but once the paint dried, I loved the color. I also decided that with the new paint job, the bathroom mirror needed to be replaced. It now looks like an entirely new bathroom!

Our second project was painting the breakfast nook. I’d picked out the paint (Mexican Sand) and bought it moths ago, back when I purchased the paint for the kitchen and living room. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the paint had sat in the house for three months, or if the existing white paint on the walls was so horrible, but this paint did not go on easily. And I quickly learned lesson #2 of the weekend. As much as you may hate it, you must blue tape the walls, ceilings and molding, especially if you are painting with darker colored paint. Mom tried to convince me to tape the room before we started painting, but I can be hard-headed and told her we could do it with the fancy edging tools we had. Well, lets just say, mother’s always right! The paint was dark enough that we had to put on a second coat, so we decided to tape the entire room for the second coat and the results were much better and cleaner!

However, once the paint dried, I learned lesson #3 of the weekend. If you are painting two rooms that touch each other, and you are choosing colors in the same color family, make sure they contrast enough so that they look like two different colors. The breakfast nook “Mexican Sand” looks almost exactly like the kitchen/dining room “Tamarind” and you can barely tell that the breakfast nook is a darker, redder shade. In the end, its not worth repainting and everyone will probably think that it’s the same color, but I’ll know the truth, and now, so will you.

(the paint on the right is the "darker" color...or is supposed to be)

After painting we rearranged the furniture. I moved the china cabinet to the dining room, moved the table to sit in the corner of the room rather than the center, which had blocked traffic to the back patio, and moved the side table to where the china cabinet used to be. I now need to find some big baskets or a sideboard to keep all of Wrigley’s food in. And I could use some plants and some artwork – but slowly I’m getting this house decorated!

Next up, the baby’s room…the blue or pink path will be revealed on Monday!