Swatches galore

I’ve been looking at swatches ever since we started demo-ing. I’m pretty sure I dragged Adam to the paint section when we went into Home Depot to grab a crowbar to tackle the demo. Needless to say, I was excited to paint. So,  after 8 months of working on this room, I can finally say that we’re ready to paint! As you saw on our last post, we primed the entire bathroom with Olympic’s no VOC paint and we’re going to use it again to paint the entire room. As for inspiration for the color? Can’t really pinpoint where I got the color combo from, but right now I’m really loving blues, greys, white and greens. I think it’s a really great color combination that could essentially work anywhere in the house. But enough talk about color combinations…let’s get on to the swatches!

From left to right: Shark Loop, Chambray, Serene Stream and Chalky Blue.

I started off really wanting something in the blue/grey family and thought that I would love shark loop, but once it got on the wall all I felt was “meh” about it. As soon as I put the other colors up on the wall, I had an instant favorite, but didn’t say anything until I showed them to Adam. Adam walked in and picked his favorite…the same one as me! It was such an easy decision to make, but I wanted to make sure that we really loved it so we lived with the color for a couple of days. I wanted to see how the color was in different lights at different times of the day. But in the end, we chose Serene Stream!! We’ve already picked up a gallon and I can’t wait to get started. I’m contemplating whether or not to use Shark Loop to paint the ceiling, but I think we’ll live with the white ceiling for a bit just to make sure.

So stay tuned to the next post…I need to get my paint on!

In the White Room…

Sorry for not posting in a while. We’ve been a little busy with this guy!
We adopted him from Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem on Sunday and he’s been taking all of our precious time, but he’s so worth it. And it helps that he’s so stinking cute.

Moving on from the cuteness overload! We’ve actually been quite busy in the Farrar/Van Buren household these past couple of weekends. We have finally primed the bathroom, meaning it’s ready to be painted! Since neither one of us had ever painted a room in our lives, it will be a learning experience. I learned that Adam is a messy painter and painting ceilings without an extension rod is tough and hard on the arms/shoulders/neck. But all in all, we got it done and it’s really starting to feel like a room, like a real room where we could actually use it!

We decided to use Olympic’s no VOC primer, and I absolutely loved it. It didn’t have that freshly painted smell that lasts for days, which means it’s you’re not breathing in those nasty vapors. Granted, it’s a little more expensive, but I think it’s totally worth it. Why breath in those nasty chemicals when you don’t have too? And an added bonus was that it didn’t take as long as we thought it would because it dried pretty quickly. We were able to put two coats on in about 3 hours, so not to shabby! We did notice that the areas that were covered in the cement board really soaked up the primer, but we actually only used one gallon to do two coats and some touch ups here and there.

Here I am painting away!
Once the primer was dry, it allowed us to see our imperfections. Walls that looked really great –smooth and even before we primed – had some spots with knicks and would need some patching. Not too many though.

Here’s a shot midway through priming…

Now all we need is some paint. I’ve picked out a couple of samples…so hopefully we’ll decide soon!