Week 4: Dining Room Repaint

First off, I have to say I am pretty excited about the weather this weekend!  And even though I spent much of Saturday afternoon and all of Saturday night prepping and painting the dining room, I definitely managed to take the dog for a walk to enjoy the 50 degree weather yesterday and the 59 degree weather today!  Granted it is going to drop down to 20 tomorrow, but it's days like these in the middle of winter that make me smile a little when I look and see that it is 7 degrees and feels like -17 in Minneapolis today.  I am really happy to have made the move to KC!  

Ok, back to the reason for this week's blog....to describe my dining room makeover!  Stage 1 was back in October-to repaint the dining room ceiling from orange to white.  I am not sure what it is about burnt orange that the prior homeowners loved, but it was the most common color used in the house!  They had the dining room ceiling and curtains orange, the kitchen orange, and the master bedroom orange.  Jake managed to convince me to keep the bedroom orange, but I convinced him we would be getting rid of it everywhere else then!  

So here are some pictures to go along with Stage 1.  

Original Owner Dining Room:

Dining Room with repainting ceiling: 

 

I've been debating on what color to paint the dining room for awhile.  Between looking up colors on Houzz, Pinterest, etc., I narrowed it down to a grey-blue or else some sort of lighter blue variation.  To start I went to Home Depot and got 2 gray-blueish samples and painted against the trim.  

During the daylight the paint seemed to contrast, but once there was no natural light in the room it almost appeared a shade slightly different than white.  So back to Home Depot I went and got 5 other samples.  Which I was happy I did get the samples because they all looked a little different and I ended up going with one that I didn't initially think I would want.  I taped up the paint cards next to each sample so I would remember which one belonged to each section I painted.  

Some were more aqua colored or brighter blue than others, so when all was said and done I decided on the Cumberland Fog color (which is shown as the middle sample of the group of three above and looks like this: 

I learned my lesson from painting the hallway and went through and when I wiped the walls off any time my dustrag caught on anything I sanded it down right away.   I also went through and filled all holes and the many cracks with putty before beginning painting.  This was the largest crack I found and knew if I didn't do anything about it that it would show through the lighter colored paint. 

I then taped everything off so I didn't have to be as careful around the trim and off I went! I was so happy with the final product as our dining room seems so much brighter and cheerier with all of that darker green gone.  All you have to do now is pay no attention to the orange curtains.  We did end up taking them down, so I'm guessing my week 5 or 6 project (Stage 3 of dining room overhaul) will be making some new ones to replace the orange from the downstairs once and for all! 

Rachel