Oh, what color can do!

Our new home (the one we will move into in the middle of the month) is wonderful and quaint. However, someone, along its 100-ish year history, decided to paint the walls an absolutely pukey dark khaki color (among other horrid decisions... commented on in a later post). It really is bad. Thankfully, our landlady is like me and LOVES color - and thus she offered to buy paint for us so we can liven up the atmosphere of this house.

So here is the master bedroom when we were first shown the house:Okay, the master bedroom is the only room that wasn't painted that nasty khaki, but stark white isn't much better either.

Starting out, I really wanted to make this room calm, peaceful, and reflective of the green leafy view we'll be seeing out of the bay window. So here's my scheme:

The steely blue was a little bit of a risk, since I was afraid it would turn out to be gray and just make the room depressing. The green would be the color of our coverlet for our down comforter, creating a tiny bit of color. But I like to call it "manly light blue" because we needed a light color for our small room that wasn't a lame baby blue but it needed to have the same "a man lives in this house too" feeling like navy. The compromise? The color "Ozone" by Behr.

After about 5 days of cleaning the house top to bottom (the house had about 15 years of dust in it) we then started to paint. I started out and went to town just painting painting painting. Here's how it looked by the end of day 1 painting:Yes, I do realize the paint job at this point looks only half done - Explaination: I'm short and terrified of heights - thus why the color only goes up about 9 feet. Our ladder is only 6 feet tall and I will NOT go farther than the second-to-top rung. My husband was needed to complete the taping of the crown molding and then painting a foot below it. Only then I was able to use the roller extender and finish the job!

After an initial panic of "Oh crud, I chose to paint my bedroom Battleship Gray!!,"all is well and here is the final result:

I love it and kind of get a beachy feel from the contrast of the blue and white - and the blue isn't too steel-y or to baby-ish.

One room down -- 3 more to go!! Next up, the kitchen, a mix of priming, painting trim and then painting walls. I shake my fist at you icky khaki color!