Yellow, Yellow Go Away

I'm over yellow.  And have been for a while.

A yellow living room that is.

Remember my 2011 to-do's?  Well, we got to check one off our list this weekend.  Particularly #3.

I finally convinced Jer with my sweet fluttering big brown eyes to re-paint the living room.  Yup, I did some majorly fast eye fluttering to sway him but it worked.  I didn't just want to re-paint it, I wanted to re-paint it like last weekend.  I was afraid he'd change his mind if we didn't get it done asap.  So last Friday evening after he got off work, we headed to Lowe's in Southlake (since my favorite paint store Sherwin Williams was already closed) to pick out our color.  I knew that I wanted a No-VOC paint so that we can save our B-man's brain cells...and ours too, but his are more important.  So we looked at their Olympic paint brand and couldn't really narrow down the exact color that I was looking for.  I wanted either a greige (grayish-beige) color or a very light gray.  Remember me saying I wanted to lighten up our living room to make it feel more clean and fresh?  Well I did.  And I meant it (not sure that Jer really believed me).  The problem was that Sherwin Williams had my color...Alpaca.  Alpaca is a very soft gray which was exactly what I was looking for.  So when we didn't find (couldn't agree on a color) the color that was perfect for our living room, I asked the Lowe's paint guy if he could color match a paint color with one that Sherwin Williams carries and he said, "Yes!"  Actually he wasn't as expressive but I was.  It was music to my ears.  I didn't want to have to wait till the next morning to run to SW for our paint.  I wanted to get started that night.

After we had our color picked out, our next decision was which base we wanted to use.  Olympic or Valspar.  The guy gave us his spill on both brands and it made MUCH more sense to go with the new and improved Valspar paint.  It now is allergy free, it has a primer in it (which means we didn't have to apply a primer before we started painting our gray on), it is easier to clean, its super thick and we only had to apply one coat AND there was ZERO VOC!  Perfect.  We'll buy it.  However, it was 2 times...yes, twice the price of the Olympic paint but Jer thought it was worth it regardless.  Oh in case you are wondering, we got it in satin.  I love satin for our walls.  It's not too dull (like eggshell) and not too glossy (like semi-gloss).  It's just perfect.

Once we got home I immediately got to painting.  Actually I started "cutting in."  This is my favorite thing to do.  I love cutting in while Jer gets to use his roller and roller extension pole to paint the wall in between.  Call me a rebel...but this time I didn't even use any painters tape.  I broke open the can, grabbed my brush and went at it.  I painted until about 2 am.  It gave us a huge head start for the next day.  Thankfully on Saturday my mom was coming over to watch B for us while we finished up, Thank You, Mom!

Here's a BEFORE picture of our yellow living room (well, part of it.  For some reason I can't get all of my other pictures to load.  Not a fan of this new MacBook Pro just yet so I can only upload a few pictures).  I loved the color and still do...just not for my living room.  

 I started to cut-in while Jer sat on the phone.  But at least he was out of my way.

Then the next day he did his part.  While I continued to cut-in...it's a tedious job, especially when you don't tape off your baseboards.  

By Saturday afternoon we were done and everything was back in its place.  Once we were done with the living room, Jer started and finished another project which I'll tell you more about tomorrow.  He was so proud.  :)  Anyway, on to the afters...  

AFTER:

AFTER WITH TOYS:

 A comparison of the stairs in both colors (the lighting doesn't do the gray any justice):

And that folks is how we spent most of our weekend...among two other projects that Jer did.  More on those later.  I love weekends like that.  I love when you work hard and see a huge change.  I was missing my yellow walls there for a while but this gray is really growing on me.  

Next up is new thick crown for our living room.  Fingers crossed it'll be installed next weekend!  :-)

~Jeni