11 Years + 11 months in... Thoughts on Colors

This is apparently a garden blog now.  It took me how many years to get Matt's room photographed? I am just sort of... unmotivated to share the inside the house these days. The garden is worth sharing. The flowers are worth sharing. The inside of the house is, well... tidy? Sometimes? It is much cleaner than it used to be when I was in the weeds of being sick. But it's crowded and cluttered too often. Too many things are homeless, or their home is inconveniently far away in the basement. The rooms have worn. Too often do I wonder if maybe it's time for a change instead of just trying to make do. 

It was a pain to build and when I was finished I was so proud! And it looked so good! I wanted to share a picture of it until I realized a second glaring truth...  I don't photograph the dining room because even more glaring than the crate furniture? I need to repaint the dining room. 

Technically it just needs to be touched up in like 7 places- we removed the curtains around the dining room doors because they weren't functional with 2 kids (and it only takes one game of "I'm a ghost" to pull the whole rod down). A chair took a chunk of the wall behind it. A cabinet door took another. We filled in poorly placed nail hole. Mike added light switches for the outdoor lights and receptacle for the greenhouse. Stuff like that. 

Why I haven't I fixed any of this? Of course these wall splotches bother me. But the paint can dried up about 5 years ago. And getting a new paint can... they never match perfectly. Our bedroom is a shining example of this tragic mistake - I touched it up with a second can (from the playroom/sunroom), not the original, and now the walls are mottled and it bothers me. It looks dirty. I need to fix it but that requires repainting the whole room... and it's our bedroom, so I put it off. 

So now I have to repaint the entire dining room and if I'm going to do that... why would I keep it the same color when we could choose something new after 12 years? It makes no sense to keep it when I'm kind of tired of it. I love the color, don't get me wrong, but I'm ready for a change. The green is soothing, so maybe I would like something in a much lighter green? Or perhaps something neutral like a pale gray? Or Hazy Blue, my favorite paint color because it's the perfect aqua? 

And if I change the color in one room...  well this is where I spiral. The paint in the kitchen needs touching up too. And like I mentioned, our bedroom paint is two toned from two cans of paint and looks splotchy on sunny days. And I really want to repaint the downstairs half bath. The dark yellow isn't holding up well and I think this room needs to be a deep dark navy that hides dirt because this is a high traffic boy room where they go to wash their hands every time they come in. There's paint splatter, stains, gouges and marks. The wallpaper is scratched and peeling from curious toddlers. The room needs a refresh. And then I think about the living room gray. I love that it's bold, I love that such a perfect shade of medium warm gray... but it's also REALLY dark on gray days. I keep thinking that it might be time for a refresh in there too... like a lighter silvery gray that goes with the wallpaper (because my mom hung that wallpaper, before she was sick, and I'm not ready to let go of it yet). 

So that's the conversation I've been having, with myself, for over a year. Which is why the dining room stays scuffed up and I don't take enough house pictures inside anymore because it doesn't feel like it's in a shareable state, even when it's clean and tidy. But now that I'm feeling better, now that we've lived in this house for a decade and I've given every color choice in our house a fair turn... it's time to repaint.

It's official. 

Not every room is changing. The playroom will stay Palladian Blue. The upstairs bath will stay Guilford Green. Matt's room will stay Hollingsworth Green for now, though he's been asking for us to paint the ceiling navy blue like Ollie's room, so we are going to do that. Oliver's room is was repainted Gray Owl last summer (I know I still need to share photos of his finished room, which I will do very soon, we were deciding on artwork and got stuck) so it's still fresh. But the rest? Things are changing!

So the new palette is very soothing, very gray-green-blue. The dining room is going to be Woodland White, which is basically a much lighter version of what's in here. I like the soothing sage green and I think a lighter shade will make the room feel fresh. The living room will a soft silver gray that goes well with the wallpaper.  A lighter version of that gray will be used in the upstairs hall. A gallon of Van Deusen Blue should cover both the half bath (since it's TINY) and Matt's ceiling (since his room is TINY too). 

Eventually, later, we'll paint our room my beloved Hazy Blue. It's honestly not that different than what we have in there now (look at the two shades next to each other on the bottom left of the image, Palladian Blue is just a little lighter and grayer) but will feel fresh. It's not a priority though - our room is crammed with so much furniture, it's going to be the toughest room to paint (when we first painted it, it was empty! We didn't even have carpet yet!), so it's at the bottom of the priority painting list. 

There's no timeline for repainting. I am starting with the dining room because it's the most tattered and I spend 5 days a week at the dining room table working. The living room will probably be next. The kitchen needs a fresh coat of paint too, but I have an entire can of Edgecomb Gray so I'll probably just keep it that color when the time comes. We have a half done electrical project that needs to be taken care of in there before we can patch and paint though.