So Many Colors. So Few Walls.

Do you ever feel that way when you are picking paint for the walls of your house? There are so many gorgeous colors on the market, yet I don't have enough walls to cover.

I've never had to choose paint colors for an entire house at one time before. It's an overwhelming process. It is not an exaggeration to say that I would lay awake, staring at my ceiling at 3 am thinking about paint colors. I researched and gathered paint chips constantly. I have so many paint chips that I could cover all four walls of the living room, floor to ceiling, and pass it off as a new trendy wall treatment. I was able to narrow it down to the brands of paint I wanted to use fairly quickly. I'm a Sherwin Williams/Benjamin Moore girl all the way. My everyday house is 90% Sherwin Williams. I prefer Sherwin Williams/Benjamin Moore not only for the quality but I just like their color palettes more. Perfect tones, hues, & saturation.

For this house I chose mostly Benjamin Moore colors. I narrowed down my 150 chips to about 10 and headed to my local BM store and bought samples in those 10 colors. They sell their samples in quarts, way too much paint to be used for a sample so if your reading this and you want to sample a BM color, hit me up. Chances are I have it and you are more than welcome to take it off my hands! I did not want to paint sample swatches directly on the newly installed drywall. I didn't know how it would take, if the color would be accurate, if it would be a problem covering it up, etc. I headed to the dollar store and bought a few sheets of foam board. Here's a reminder to myself: Always check the crawl space before purchasing anything related to DIY. Of course, I had foam board already in the crawl space so now I have an abundance (anyone need foam board too???). With the help of my two beautiful daughters, we painted our sample boards, a lot of sample boards.

We gathered all the samples and took them up to the house. We placed each in different rooms to see how they would look in the house's own personal lighting. While it took me forever to narrow down my paint choices, it took me no time to actually pick which color was going in which room. Scott would hold up the board, I'd immediately dismiss it or okay it. I picked the colors in about 30 seconds flat once there. We have an entire house to paint, no sense wasting any time hemming and hawing, right?

Here's what I came up with. A soft, neutral backdrop for my vintage nautical design aesthetic.

As you can see, the upstairs bedrooms and bath are the only rooms where I used Sherwin Williams in this house. Why? Convenience. I have Sea Salt and Repose Gray in my Medina house and I had almost full gallons left over. Less money spent on paint equals more money in the budget for fun stuff!

The only thing left to do was slap this stuff on the walls. I've painted walls more than a few times. I always forget how terrible I am at edging. It's possible the ceilings had more paint on them than the actual wall. Fortunately there were a few qualified people there helping us out. Thanks to Scott's dad, my mom and my dad, we were able to get the entire house painted, two coats, (always two coats despite what the paint manufacturer says) in what totaled two days.

Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Gray. This color gave me quite the scare, which is unfortunate considering that it's almost everywhere, including the very tall stairwell that is not for the faint of heart when it comes to painting. After the first coat was on it looked like a pretty, light warm gray. Exactly what I wanted. Then the light changed and it looked more yellow. Then the light changed again and it looked like a muddy pink color. I loved it at one glance, hated it at the next. But I had 10 gallons of the stuff and almost the whole house painted. I thought I'd might have to live with this horrible color, at least for a year until I could talk Scott into repainting. Fortunately, after the second coat went on, all the ugliness went away. It's back to being a beautiful light warm gray and even though it changes a bit depending on the time of day, it still looks pretty no matter what. Paint chemistry is so weird.

When you need enough paint to cover 1500 sf, you do anything you can to get every last drop!

We had an excellent experience at our local Benjamin Moore store. I think we purchased a total of 14 gallons of paint. They did not have 5 gallon buckets of the eggshell finish that we wanted but they gave us the 5 gallon discounted price on the Edgecomb Gray since we were buying 10 gallons of it. Score. They also gave us a coupon for $7 off each gallon we bought. Double score. And they gave us free t shirts and hats so we could look stylish while we painted. Score! Score! Score! Give me free stuff and discounts and you have a customer for life.

Kids room - Sherwin William Repose Gray

Don't worry, all the slanted ceilings did get painted. I kept thinking they looked weird unpainted. And they did in fact look weird. Thanks to my mom for confirming.

I love Sherwin Williams Super Paint, especially in the Velvet finish. It's a nice matte finish that looks like, well velvet. You can't scrub this finish when cleaning but who has time to wash their walls anyways?

Guest Bedroom - Sherwin Williams Sea Salt

Master Bedroom - Benjamin Moore Gray Wisp. A subtle gray green.

Laundry Area - Benjamin Moore Beach Glass

The foyer is painted my favorite color in the entire house. It's a beautiful blue gray. It is on the same swatch as Beach Glass in the laundry room, just a shade darker. I think it is going to be such a wow moment with the white vertical tongue and groove wall panels and the star tile I picked for this space.

Entry - Benjamin Moore Mount Saint Anne

All these photos are after first coat only. Can you believe I never took photos after we finished the final coats? I'm going to contribute that to the heat exhaustion I suffered on the final paint day. Thank god my mom recognized the signs right away because I was pushing myself to get the job done. You'll just have to wait to see the final product in the post all about light fixtures. That's coming up next!