Saturday, December 11, 2010

big reveal of the *final* paint choice

First, I have a short story to share. If anyone is reading this blog, you might have noticed that I got an actual comment!! From someone from Benjamin Moore. I was a little skeptical, because there are all kinds of kooks on the internet, but I shot an email out to her. She sent me 4 paint color suggestions. They were: 2147-50 pale sea mist , 2145-40 fernwood green, 431 central park and 430 landscape. (plus promised to send a gift card, bonus!)

I had originally tried pale sea mist at the same time I had tested the dill pickle. I thought it was very pastel-y (and also did not see yellow, I thought it looked like a mint, or old lady color - JMO!! I'm sure it's lovely) I already had a strip with the fernwood green but rejected it because it was an even paler, murkier and more yellow than the dill pickle. Note that I did not buy a paint sample, so I don't know what it would actually look like. The paint chips for the other two were not available at my store, but he did have the fan book thingy and I looked at them and selected the central park to sample. While there, I also got a sample of Sherwood Green HC-118. I have a friend on Facebook who showed me a picture of her dining room where she had Kittery Point Green HC-119 which is one lighter and I thought my room needed a darker shade.

So that puts the sample count at two, if you got lost in this long winded short story... Central Park and Sherwood Green. This time I got smart and painted my portable samples on foam core poster board - so they stood up nice and flat, better than regular poster board. I also did the usual big splotches on various walls. I loved them both. The Central Park was exciting and fresh but scared me to death. The Sherwood was nice and "safe" but not the fresh feeling I wanted.

On the second coat, I had poured much too much of the Central Park in the little bucket, so I decided to paint some in the laundry room. Yee-ikes! Can you say Kermit the Frog?! It was sooo bright! But it looked so good in the family room. I must say that test sample swayed our decision. Plus Gary preferred the Sherwood. So we chose the Sherwood Green.

Here are pictures of the results. It just got painted on today, and required only 1 coat.








It looks much greener in this last picture that what I see in real life. I would say it's got a lot of blue going on in the color. It is somewhat like a doctor's scrub - not the blue, but the blue/green. Maybe scrubs are not the right thing, but definitely reminds me of a hospital or medical related color. But we are not medical people, so it doesn't bother us. And it sometimes looks a bit pastel-y - but not minty. It's got a nice calming vibe. Not really old lady - or so I hope not. When you first paint it on and it's still wet, it's shockingly old lady pastel! Both of them were! I thought I was being punked! But it dries darker and very nice.

while my painter was doing his magic in this room (which, BTW, is done! he finished the white too, so we can get the carpet laid) I was painting the laundry room. I decided to use up the rest of the dill pickle in there. I had a tad more than a half gallon left over. It's a small room and the lighting is very different in there. I want cheery when I do drudgery work. And the dill pickle delivers! It glows! It glows green! A bright vibrant green. I love it. This simply isn't a color for my living room, but great in the laundry room. It had a yukky tan on it before, so I need a second coat to ensure that grossness doesn't seep through. I tried to take pictures, but it just doesn't justify the feel you get.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Today's progress - pictures! carpet and tile


Jake enjoying the new smartstrand carpet. It is so soft!!





(I forgot these post in reverse order, and since I'm lazy, this will be "backwards day!")


This is a shot of the final product, you can see the worker is buffing off the haze, and the green patchwork walls in the family room where the carpet has been ripped out. The stripes is really just the sun shining through the balcony spindles from our west facing room.




Close up of the tile and grout after the grout has dried. There is still a haze, and these photos were taken from my phone camera. 18X18" tiles.







A shot with the kitchen cabinets. They chipped up my new paint job in several places. this is before they replaced the quarter rounds. My painter is paid by the hour, so he won't mind fixing it. The cabinets are white, not yellow or cream like it looks here.





Tile with grout still wet. I kinda like the darker grout, but the lighter is fine with me too!





This is the dry rot they found underneath a second layer of vinyl. I knew there had been a dishwasher leak, but who knew it would be so rotten?? They took out a large rectangle of floor down to the joists and found several cracked joists. The floor had sunk and so they put in a support beam and jacks to level it out. Thankfully, the granite had seams so it did not crack when they jacked it up.





See what I meant about drama? Drama comes with a hefty price tag too!