Are you ready for the holidays?

I am! Well, I’m getting there. I started tonight by putting up my new wreath. There are a few other door decorations up in our building, so I hope to wow the neighbors. Hopefully we’ll get our tree this weekend. Dr. Jay, are you reading this?

Sorry I have been MIA so far this month. An (almost) full month of blogging really took it out of me and I needed a break. But I’m brimming with ideas to post so hopefully I can keep some of that momentum from my November challenge.

I wanted to do an update on a few of my hanging chads out there… I know you are all curious about the newly painted apartment. I’ll do my best to represent the Before, During (when I freaked out about the color) and After (my happy place).

When we moved in, the apartment was an inoffensive tan. I think my landlady called it Safari Tan. I liked it alright, and even received a few compliments on it, but after a month or so I didn’t dig it so much any more. The floors in our place are light, and there just wasn’t any contrast between floor and wall surface. And then there’s the fact that there are some lighting issues in this apartment- not much natural light, very few overhead lights. It’s cause for shadows and distorted colors, and the tan was looking very peach-y to me at times. It got to a point where I just couldn’t stand it. Our land-lady agreed that I could paint if I would paint it back to Safari Tan when we move out if she doesn’t like the new color. Here’s a shot of our place in Safari Tan:

Again, I don’t think the true color comes through in any of these photos. I know, it looks totally fine in tan, but I just needed something different. I decided I wanted a "”sophisticated blue grey”. I went to my local hardware/crack Benjamin Moore dealer and got several samples which were promptly draft-dotted to the wall. For weeks. I looked at these blue-greys for literally a month before I was sure which one I wanted. It’s this large chip in the front, and all the others were the ones that didn’t make the cut.

Well, long story short, it’s not just greens and reds that are hard to get right in paint, it’s also blues. This particular paint boggles my mind. I still like the paint sample. I like it sitting on our table. But on five of our walls at once, in a small, poorly lit apartment? Oh, it suddenly became an aquarium. I don’t know what possessed me to keep painting after I saw how bright and blue it was. I guess I kept thinking it would dry differently or look better in different light. But by the next day I had my mind set to change it. Again. During my second week of work. Here are the next set of paints that I decided between on top of the crazy blue. This time I bought the mini-sample paints and painted squares on two walls which have completely different lighting. I will ALWAYS do this in the future.

Okay, it’s very difficult for you to tell from the photo above exactly how bright the blue is, but if you can see how much lighter the new colors are, and when you see the ultimate color that I went with, you’ll have some idea of how blue the original was. The color I ended up choosing was the first one, which is actually Ace paint (had to go cheaper the 2nd time around) in Dover Grey. But it also has blue in it, it’s just not as intense as the first color. I’ll spare you my whining from the week of painting hell (I think I already did that in a previous post) and I’ll finally show you the results:

One with the light on and one without. Oh, and we moved the furniture around.

I took these during my lunch break the other day when it was actually sunny here. We’ve had a series of dreary, rainy days and it’s pitch dark when I get home at night, so I knew I’d never get accurate paint color photos in those conditions.

So, there’s a little blue in it still, but I like the grey tones and frankly it’s a very soothing space to be in. And I’m so glad it’s done!

And one last update. The chair debate. Thank you to those that commented and offered your thoughts. Dr. Jay has actually relented that he doesn’t mind the chair so much (an afternoon of shopping and much time internet browsing may have convinced him) and he’s willing to consider it. And I decided that it’s crazy to order a chair online (it’s not available in a store) unless I at least first have a fabric sample, so I called last weekend and am having a fabric sample of the first chair and its sister chair sent to us. Then it will be decision time:

OR ?

What do you think? Click on the photos for their source info.