Living Room Makeover: Paint

Well, all that you've been hearing on the blog the past week have been crickets, huh? We've been on vacation mode and it has been wonderful!

Jeremy had an entire week off which was amazing! We had planned to go to the beach and do some fun stuff around town, but a hurricane squashed our beach plans, then Jeremy came down with a nasty summer cold...on vacation. Poor guy! But, we thoroughly enjoyed all the family time and just hanging out around the house together! He's totally the family favorite. :)

Then, this past weekend, I went on a retreat with the women from my community group.  It was so relaxing and wonderful! I mean, look at this place!

While Jeremy was off--before he got sick--he was so sweet and painted the living room for me! I was really struggling to pick out a paint color. I wanted a gray that had blue/green undertones. Some grays were too blue, some too green, some too gray, too dark, too light, AHHHH! It about drove me crazy! 8 paint tests later...we finally found the perfect shade!

The gray we picked is called Gray Owl from Benjamin Moore. I first saw it on The Lettered Cottage and about 6 paint samples in, decided to give it a try. I originally tried it lightened 50%, but it was a bit too light and didn't provide enough contrast with the couch. We ended up getting it in full strength and it's just right! I really love it 50% lightened, too, and am planning to use that to paint our bathrooms! We had it mixed at Sherwin Williams. We love their Harmony paint! It has great coverage and hardly any fumes!

We tested the paint on each wall to see how the sun hit it, but I was still struggling to visualize it on an entire wall. I found this inspiration picture from West Elm and it gave me the confidence to finally commit to the color. I loved that they used a beige couch like we have, so it was easy to picture how the gray would look with beige.

Here it is in our living room! It's was really hard to get an accurate picture of the paint color, but you can get the idea!

We did some spur of the moment rearranging when we were putting the living room back together. More on that soon!