My Painting Lesson

How long have I been promising pictures of my new kitchen color?

Too long, I know. So today, I finally cleaned my kitchen enough to feel ok about, AND it stayed that way long enough to actually take pictures.

So let's talk about where I started with in this room.

Lots and lots of wallpaper.  Which I hate. With a passion.

Back in august, I ripped it all off.  It was a messy process, but was really quite easy.

And then it sat.  For months.  'cause I had great plans for it.  Plans that require lots of funds that I spend on diapers and apple sauce instead.  Plans something like this:

(ok, so my photoshop skills need some help here, but you get the idea, right?)

Not exactly a quick or inexpensive change.  And somehow the Magical Money Fairy keeps missing our house.

About a month ago, I was staring at the walls in the dining nook, and I kind of lost it. I KNEW it had to get finished already. 

I've been staring at these half finished walls for too long!

It took a LOT of trial and error, but I eventually found my great color! Since this post is already getting too long, let's just say it was 5 different samples, all of which I used to cover the original really dark green, kind of like a primer.

Painting causes major messes!

The eventual color I ended up with is called Alexandrite (by sherwin williams), mixed to only 50% power. 

I love it. It looks so perfect in my kitchen!

I ended up with an entire extra gallon. So I thought I'd paint the living room too.

ummm, anyone else feeling like this looks like a crazy mess?

It's almost the exact same color. I did mix in some white to stretch the paint a bit.  But in here . . .
It doesn't work. I've thought and thought about why it looks so funny.

I finally realized what it was.  It's the accents.  In my kitchen, everything is a white/light accent.  In the living room, everything is black.  It just doesn't work.

Not quite what I was hoping for!  But I also don't want to change every single accent in the room.

So what's my lesson?  Sometimes, the perfect color just needs some tweaking (like working with accents), and sometimes the accents need a better perfect color (which I'll find someday!)