First up: Paint!

Once the papers were signed (on Friday morning), our first task was to paint before moved in the following day (Saturday). Yeah. I knew that it would be much more difficult to paint once we had all our stuff in the house, and I couldn't imagine living in a room with this gold and brown faux-finish for even a day.

Thankfully, I have some wonderful in-laws who came up from Mississippi armed with paintbrushes and ready to paint. Oh, and then they also helped us move in the next day. We are ridiculously blessed. 

We chose Sherwin Williams SuperPaint based on a recommendation from my mom, who had used it previously. I also had a coupon for both paint and supplies at SW, so that didn't hurt, either. It's a paint and primer in one and is really, really thick. I had actually also purchased a can of primer from Sherwin Williams as well, based on the recommendation of the sales guy when I told him we were painting over a faux finish. But we decided to try the paint without primer first and see what happened. Even though we eventually did two coats, we could already tell after the first coat that we were going to have enough coverage without the primer. Thankfully since it was a primer, not a mixed paint, I was able to return it without a problem. 

The color we chose was Collonade Gray, from the HGTV line. I knew I wanted a light gray, and I wanted to create a cohesive color scheme throughout the house. After going back and forth about a million times, I chose three colors from this line. (I'll share the other two colors in their respective room posts.) I was able to take my swatches to the house as seen above) and hold it up in a few different places, and was pretty happy with it. And this also gives you another close-up of the original wall color (shudder). 

Here are a few progress shots. I told you that I have an awesome family!

And an after, with furniture: 

This is from the side door. 

Here's a look from the other side: 

Not the best pictures, I know, but you get the idea. There's also a small hallway that was also painted gold, which we painted the same color. I'll get to that space later.

I also debated painting the trim on the two windows in the room. It looked like that had been painted previously, but the previous owners had stripped them, maybe because they added the brown curtain rods? And the brown tones in the faux finish? Either way, once we painted the room I decided they didn't look as bad as I initially thought. Also I was really tired of painting at that point. They might get tackled later, but as long as those wooden curtain rods are there and unpainted, I'm leaving them the way they are. 

I'll do a separate post on furniture and furniture placement, because that's already changed since I took the pic above. The room presents some interesting challenges because there are two doors and one doorway in this small space, plus the fireplace. So there's not a lot of flexiblity with arrangements. But I'm pretty happy with where we are now. 

I'll be back soon with more! In the meantime, do you have any advice for choosing a paint color? Any stories of paint color choices gone wrong? Worst color you've ever seen in a house?