Dining Room Glimmers

When my kitchen design was finalized, it utilized the entire kitchen space.  The original kitchen was tiny and closed off. 

When I mentally redesigned the space, I only used half of the room, thinking that the other half would be great for a table and maybe a sideboard, but other than that, not much.  Instead, my awesome kitchen designer drew up plans that encompassed the entire room. 

Brilliant, right??  I know, it seems so simple, but if it's all one room, why not use the whole room?  It was kind of a duh/ah ha moment for me. 

When I decided to go ahead with the kitchen remodel, I was understandably worried about the costs.  I hemmed and hawed about going ahead and doing the dining room, or waiting until I had more monies.  Ha!! Since reality finally hit and I knew that I wasn't going to get more money (in the remodeling sense) anytime soon, I went ahead with the dining room build. 

While I was prepared for the build, my sweet builder's shop wasn't quite ready.  He had to build out the kitchen and install it and then build out the dining room.  Apparently my kitchen cabinets filled the entire floorspace of the workshop and had to be moved out before he could build the dining room side. 

A short two weeks later, my dining room looked like this-

Now, the wait was on for doors and paint!

The Finale to the 5 colors...

Warning: Wordy post! I have a lot to say. I've been in the house listening to the rain all day, getting things done, but no one to talk to, so you're getting it all!

Last week I posted this picture.


The premise seems simple enough right? Pick out a shade a green and paint my kitchen walls, at least the walls that aren't just studs... Ha! Once upon a time, I painted my bedroom a light shade of green. Eek!! It came out more Kermit than relaxing escape. I am bent and determined not to make that mistake again. Hence my demands. (in case you forgot from last time... I knew that I wanted a soft sage green that wasn't too babyish, wasn't too bright, wasn't too dark, too yellow, too blue or any of a million other criteria.)

After looking at the colors and making a snap decision, I had my choice. (Don't know how I pick colors so fast, but I always have. Somehow I just "know." Granted, that doesn't always work out so well for me (recall Kermit?) but it's how I roll. I liked all of the colors I picked, but killed Simply Sage immediately. My kitchen is DARK and I know it will be light and bright when I get the new lighting scheme in, but until then I didn't want the darkness of that color.

Ocean Foam had a fabulous color, but echoed too much of the Kermit color of my old bedroom. Silver Sage is one of the most popular furniture colors in blogdom. While I love it, it didn't have enough of a difference between the color and the cabinet color. By process of elimination, I was left with Vale Mist. I'm not sure how much eliminating I did, since that was my first choice anyway, but I at least validated it. :)

Off I went to Home Depot and ordered a gallon of the Vale Mist. If you recall, Vale Mist is originally a Benjamin Moore color, not Behr (Home Depot's paint brand) When I took my tiny (1"x2") chip back, the lady at HD asked me for the lid to the paint sample had purchased the night before. Oops. Finished the paint pot and threw the container away. I had the chip, what was the problem??? The issue? We had put some of the paint on the chip from the sample to prove the chip matched. That paint reflected the light wrong differently and would mess up the sample. What's a girl to do? Thankfully, I'm well known at Home Depot and Susan, yup, on a first name basis here, pulled up the queue from the night before and found my 4 color samples. By reading the combination of dyes, we were able to figure out which one was the un-named Vale Mist. After mixing up my color, Susan spot matched the new gallon of Vale Mist with my color chip. It looked great and off I went.

When I got home, I quickly put the paint up on the wall. The more I put up the paint color, the more upset and unhappy with the color. What the heck? When I put the color up on the wall next to my four sample colors, I discovered that it didn't match the original color. While it looked okay from a distance, it wasn't the same color. Granted, it wasn't a huge difference. Instead it was one that made you wonder if you're eyes were out of focus. Not huge, but I kept insisting that it was okay. (Basically I was trying to fool myself into liking it. Guess who wasn't fooled?)

After being mad and frustrated, Marc pulled the lid out of the trash to try and find out why I loved the color in the 1'x1' square by HATED it larger. He examined the lids, which show the color formulas. Instead of being multiples of each other, which would make sense since one was a cup and the other a gallon, we saw different dye notations. Grrrr.

After being talked back down to a rational plane, thanks Dad, I went back to Home Depot to talk with Susan. When I explained that we couldn't even make the formulas match, she realized that I wasn't more crazy than normal and something was up. With a close look, we figured out that the paint computer had tried to take the faster way out. Instead of using a combination of black and yellow, which also makes green, the computer put a shot of the blue colorant in. This changed the entire look completely and was making me batty.

After leaving with the correct color of green, I went back and completely repainted the entire surface that I had just painted a couple of hours ago. Now, I am MUCH, MUCH happier with the color. You would not believe the change in the wall and the overall look of the room with the simple difference of black and yellow versus blue.


I know it's hard to tell on a computer screen, but there is a difference in the colors going diagonally up middle of the picture.


It is so bright and happy now. I love being in it, as long as I'm facing the right way, but that's another post.

Quite a change, huh?

The other side...

In my last post, I shared the view of my new doorway from the living room to the dining room. For anyone playing along (nope, no prize, sorry.) you should know that there is another side to the story, ahem, wall. If you don't remember, the original dining room, viewed from the living room was covered in fabulous knotty pine paneling. Yum. Oh wait, not so much. Knocking a ginormous hole in the wall helped the dining room, as well as ripping out the paneling. (Wear jeans when doing this, I still have scars on my legs from it!) The real magic occurred last month when Marc & Sara went above and beyond the call of duty and installed drywall over 1/3 of the kitchen walls. (the other 2/3 has to have electrical and gas run first before drywall.) The entire room breathed a sigh of relief when it finally shed the last of the 60's and moved into the ??? oughts? No idea here! Thoughts? Once the drywall was up, the room started whispering that it still wasn't perfectly happy. It just wanted a little color, just a little. Hmmm...
I knew that I wanted a soft sage green that wasn't too babyish, wasn't too bright, wasn't too dark, too yellow, too blue or any of a million other criteria. Easy right? I first turned to blogdom and cruised looking for colors I liked. A popular shade seemed to be Silver Sage by Benjamin Moore. This lead me down to our local Ace Hardware (only place in town that carries BM paint) to pick up several color chips, including Silver Sage. I then headed to Home Depot and picked up several different color chips there. After leaving them around the house for a few days, (during which they toured the entire house via Zach ;) I tossed out several as being wrong. Once I settled on 4 colors, I went back to Home Depot and got two color samples of their colors, and color matched two Benjamin Moore colors. Back at home I put the four colors on the wall with my trim (and eventually cabinet color) in the middle. Thoughts on my colors? (Ignore the glossy sheen. Someone wasn't patient enough to wait until the second coat had dried completely. Whoops..) Quick note: All of the paint in my house is Behr paint carried by Home Depot. The Behr paint received the highest rating in durability and color fastness in tests performed by Consumer Reports. This fits great into my motto of do this once and do it right the first time! (picture cheesy grin on my face) Quicker note: All opinions on this blog are mine and I do not receive any money or compensation from anyone for my wonderous thoughts.