Office Re-Do

Remember when not to long ago I painted this stencil wall in my office? Well, I decided I wanted to paint over it. I'm the queen of doing things more than once. It's very strange. 

 It's not that I didn't like the stenciled wall paper. It was more the color of the room. It was a lot darker than all of the other rooms in our house. The stencil also had a TON of imperfections since I did the entire thing by hand. You couldn't see them unless you got close up - but I noticed them every time I walked in the room.

First I chose a new paint color. I set out to find a lighter color gray that would flow better with the entire house. Both of the below paint swatches are Martha Stewart. We went for the top one. Bedford Gray. I can't remember the name of the lighter color on bottom. 

After the room was painted. It was not easy painting over the stencil. Stung a little bit. Even though I had plans to replace it with something very similar. After searching the internet I ordered a stencil from Royal Studio Designs. I actually ordered one that was too small at first and had to send it back. So, if you are thinking about doing a full wall make sure to order a large stencil. Once I got the right one in the mail (they ship really quickly) I was able to get started. This is when I only thought I had a few hours of stenciling ahead of me....

A day and half later....

And compared to the hand stencil....it was a breeze. But really...it was hard. Like I wanted to quit on several occasions and just paint the wall gray again. The ceiling and edges were most definitely the hardest part. I never got the hang of it and honestly never want to. I have no more stencil plans in my future:)

My main goal was accomplished. It lighted the room up and now it flows much better with the rest of the house.

The professional stencil eliminated a lot of errors...making the finished product look much more seamless.

The change isn't that dramatic. Just a little bit lighter with a different pattern. Another suggestion I would give if you are thinking about venturing in to stenciling would be to choose a base paint color that is not that different from your stencil color. It took a lot of pressing with the paint roller to cover the white paint over the gray. So, what do you guys think about the change? Did you know that after I painted this room...I had painted every single room in our house in 2011 (including bathrooms). And then stenciled the same wall twice. Does that make me crazy?

Epic Fail.

I spent ALL last Saturday painting our guest bedroom. Well, painting only took a couple of hours but I also scrub cleaned it and put all the crap back in there. The paint color I went with I thought was a no brainer....Martha Stewart's Heath. I mean Martha created it?!?WRONG. And I am pissed at Martha because of it. You can't really tell in the pictures but it's green. Like grandma green. Not sure what happened. I had it color matched to Olympic paint. So, maybe that was the problem?It's back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, I'm not really digging these colors either...I'm leaning towards going with good ol' Dusty Trail by Olympic. The same thing I painted my living room. Read about that here.

What do you think...is it bad to have the majority of your house a similar color? I kind of like it. It makes things about a gazillion times easier to decorate. For now...I'm still mad at Martha.

Down the Dusty Trail...

Yep, Dusty Trail was the choice of color for our living room. I mentioned all the color choices here. And thanks to this (The Premium XL Tight Spot Paint Brush) it was so easy. So easy I have plans to paint our hallway asap. It completely eliminated the need for taping -- it makes painting SOOO much easier!! Go buy one. It's G-REAT! And it's only like 5 bucks. Back to the Dusty Trail....We love it. Such a great neutral without being to boring. It also doesn't have any pinkish undertones that you sometimes see when choosing to paint tan on the walls.Our paint before was Davenport Tan by Benjamin Moore. It was a great color BUT it was dark. We have inquired (I say inquired because I'm pretty sure we haven't bought one piece of furniture in our living room - thrifty mcthriftersons is what you can call us) a lot of darker older furniture. We have re-done most of it and usually keep it the darker stained color. We love that look BUT we didn't love how it blended in with our dark walls. So we are especially loving how the new color makes all of our dark furniture pop....I wish I had better photog skills because obviously mine are terrible. This picture best depicts the color....
We're on the neutral band wagon at our house. After much trail and error I've found it's much easier for me to decorate, buy furniture, etc with a neutral background to work with. Anybody else learned this the hard way too? By the hard way, I mean having to paint every room in your house 65498732 times. Sorry about that Tal....