March 18, 2013 /

Painter’s Remorse

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Have you had it too?

As you know I’ve been working on my master bedroom.

This was the room before we bought the house with, of course, a very pale shade of peachy-yellow on the walls (every wall in our house, along with some trim, was painted in peach tones by the previous owners).

The pet-stained carpet was absolutely vile and I literally sneezed all day, every day, until we had those suckers ripped out and replaced.  (The funny thing is that we saw and then put an offer on this house the very first day it went on the market. In retrospect the carpets must have just been cleaned, because they looked absolutely spotless – so if you are trying to sell your house make sure to have your carpets cleaned!) 

Ripping out those gross carpets remains one of my favorite home improvements to date!!

A couple days before the new carpet was to be installed, I panicked about the prospect of painting the walls with brand new carpeting on the floor, and made a very spontaneous decision to quickly paint the walls Ben Moore’s Clarksville Grey (#HC-102 ), a color I’d seen in the Pottery Barn catalog.

From the second I opened the can I knew.

I knew it was not for me.

Ben Moore paint is not inexpensive, and when you’re painting every single room in your house those gallons of paint really add up. However, after trying other brands over the years, Mark and I are both partial to BM for it’s coverage. But — at $40-$50 a can it’s not cheap, and so I went ahead and painted the whole room even though I was not loving it. 

In someone else’s home this color might be beautiful, but in the lighting of our master bedroom, day or night, it takes on an army green tone that I am just not fond of. Also, I would love to paint our reddish-toned bureaus but Mark is adamantly opposed to it. The combination of the olivey walls and the reddish furniture?? MMMM pretty. But I have invested time and money into painting the room so I tried to make it work.

Last year around this time I tried to love my blah master bedroom more by bringing in shades of the sea during the Color My World Challenge.

It was fun to try freezer paper stenciling, create tracing paper and tissue paper canvas art and bring in some soft aqua blues with bedding and accessories in the bedroom and adjoining bath, but the overall feeling of the room was meh. hmmm. ho hum. blah.

In our last house we had a chocolate brown master bedroom and loved it. It was like a cozy cave and that room just felt GOOD to be in. Okay – so we deduce that dark in the master makes us happy.  But we were over the brown. And I have been thinking a lot about warm and cool together. In particular – charcoal grey or black with wood tones. Brown leather with navy.

ooooooooh. yesssssss.

{Canadian House and Home}

{Serena and Lily}

{Lauren Nelson Design via Decorpad}

{Rue}

After hemming and hawing and painting 47,937 samples on my wall, my good friend Jenny of Evolution of Style recommended the greeny blue navy, BM Gentleman’s Gray (#2062-20) that she had used in her powder room.

And just like I KNEW when I opened that Clarksville Gray that it wasn’t the one, the instant I opened the can of Gentleman’s Gray (that has not a shred of gray in it, by the way), I knew. We were meant for each other.

No matter how many times I paint various rooms, it’s truly amazing to me how a color can affect your mood and influence the feeling you get when you are in a space. And to me, repainting a space is worth the painful waste of choosing the wrong color if you find a color that speaks to you.

Funny thing? A couple of weeks after I painted the room, we went on our dream vacation with our munchkins to Hawaii and were surrounded by the most beautiful greeny blue waters.

It was like Jenny had some crazy intuition that our master bedroom would come to remind me of one of the happiest times with my family. Pure genius, that girl.

Oh the drama!!

Changing the wall color has inspired me to bring the rest of the room together. So here goes….the to-do list for the master bedroom. I’m posting a list right here to make myself accountable.Paint the walls and trimInstall bamboo blindsNew lamps

New curtain rods

Recover headboard

Create a vanity table

Recover vanity stool

New bedside table

Custom bedskirt

Wall sconces

Get rid of ginormous TV

So tell me, have you ever had painter’s remorse??

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