Braham Fam Adventures: Lightening Up the Living Room

After gawking at the projects completed by my sisters this summer – recovering chairs, painting loads of furniture, etc. – I was inspired and reminded that even though I often feel like we are crawling in the house project arena, we actually are making progress. Namely, paint progress.

Is there an official name for paint-sample crazed? Ironically, we ended up going with a color not even sampled. Let’s just say I was getting a little antsy… Truth be told, our small group meets weekly in our home, and trying to over-explain our walls week after week…yeah, totally embarrassing.

Oh, and of course, we first painted our walls a lovely shade of blue/grey before I snacked myself on the forehead in a paint-fume induced haze, muttering, “Self, you’re forgetting your neutral-lovin’ roots! No need to stray too far from a good thing.” Thankfully I’m married to a laid-back man.

It’s really difficult to tell in the 11 pm lighting, but the blue color – as much as I loved it – felt too cold for me once it was one our walls. I liked it, but it was more of a crush that I knew wouldn’t last beyond six months. If you’re wondering, the color above is Benjamin Moore’s Blue Nelson cut by 50%. I’m keeping it in my back pocket though – as it really is a great color!

Here’s where we landed after swapping out our buddy Nelson for a creamy neutral – Sherwin Williams’ Natural Choice. We debated over about 15 shades of tan, grey, and everything in between. But this room needed something different – perhaps because of the lighting? It’s a long room with windows on only one side, and for some reason, every color we tried felt too heavy and dark – even the color we used in our old house and loved (Valspar’s Oatbran). According to the color swatch, Natural Choice is considered a white. Since it covers so much wall space though – kitchen/dining/living room – it reads as a creamy tan with enough yellow to keep it from being fleshy and enough grey to keep it crisp. I’m smitten. And it feels good to know that we won’t be painting these walls again any time soon.

While we had our brushes out, we also painted the ceiling, trim, vents, paneling, doors, and fireplace brick. We tried to do most of it while Liam was napping or down for the night – which meant many late nights for a few weeks. Plus, the previous wall color was dark enough that we needed to prime first.

A look at the before and after.