I’m baaaack! Oh my word, these last few days have been exhausting, but I’m pleased to say that we are officially moved in! We’ve slowly been trying to get things in place and make sense out of everything. I look around at our boxes and just wonder how we accumulated so much stuff?! It’s crazy.
So here’s the breakdown of our past few days.
Thursday: closed at noon (I got major hand cramps from all the paper signing fun!), spent the rest of the evening painting.
Friday: more painting and cleaning, plus moving over boxes and small items
Saturday: a smidgen more painting and we moved over all of our furniture (we were able to get it all in one giant Uhaul, hooray!)
Sunday: church and cleaning up our old house
And that brings us to today which we spent trying to organize things around here and tying up loose ends at the old house.
Shew. Typing all of that makes me tired all over again. We did have a lot of awesome helpers, though..a big thanks to all of our friends and family! It would’ve been impossible without you!!
But back to business, you may have noticed I mentioned quite a bit of painting action. We wanted to get some of the main areas painted before we moved. Mainly these were the areas where I already had a jumping off point and had planned out what color scheme I wanted. The biggest space was the living room. I knew from the get go that I wanted a soft gray. Our old house was tan with tan and a little bit of tan thrown in for good measure. So, I knew I didn’t want a drop of tan in this house. But I do love me some nice, soft gray.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to find that elusive “perfect” shade of gray before, but goodNESS it’s next to impossible. And I even did extensive research. I gathered paint swatches and perused Favorite Paint Colors (a fabulous resource, btw) and picked my top 5 choices. Then I went to Home Depot, got my samples, and went to put them on the wall. I was absolutely floored when I saw the difference.
From left to right: Magnetic Gray by Sherwin Williams, Bedford Gray by Martha Stewart, Gray Cashmere by Benjamin Moore, Stone Harbor by Benjamin Moore, and Heavy Goose by Martha Stewart.)
See what I mean? When I held the actual paint swatches next to each other, they all looked like pretty similarly toned light grays, but once they got on the wall they took on a life of their own. I immediately discounted Gray Cashmere and Heavy Goose (which I originally thought was going to be the winner)…they were too icy blue-gray and I wanted a little muddier tone. I then eliminated Magnetic Gray because it was reading a little too green for me. So that left me with either Bedford Gray or Stone Harbor, and I ended up choosing Bedford Gray because it was a little lighter. We had it color matched to the Behr Ultra Paint and Primer in One.
So, honestly..if you’re choosing a gray (or really any color for that matter, but gray seems to be especially bad) I can’t stress enough the importance of getting plenty of samples and putting them on your wall so you can see how it looks in YOUR room. Some of the paint colors that I loved in pictures of other peoples’ rooms didn’t read the same in my room. Bedford Gray (which I’m in love with..holla!) might look like puke on your walls, in which case I’d suggest choosing another color. I don’t think I’ve found THE perfect gray, just MY perfect gray..for this room anyway 
{Case in point: John and Sherry over at Young House Love just painted some grey swatches on the outside of their house, and for them Bedford Gray looked too icy blue. Go figure. So when it comes to painting, it’s all about the test swatches baby!}
But enough blab, I know you want to see the room all painted up! So here she is..and please excuse our mess..just keepin’ it real y’all.
The color in this picture is pretty accurate to how it looks in real life.
Ahh, I love it! Oh and in case you’re wondering, those curtains were left by the previous owners..they’re very nice quality but not exactly my jam, so they’ll just stay up until I can find something different! It definitely feels good to have put our own little ‘stamp’ on the house and I can’t wait to keep stampin’!
