So the house is officially ours, and all of my Pinterest boards are about to come to life! I mean obviously I’m going to be the #nailedit type. The first thing I do when we get the keys to our home is take a ride over to Home Depot. I am completely giddy and over the top to take this first trip and buy as much as I can so that when Robby is off the next day we are ready to go. With my list in my hand, my first stop is paint – I am in charge of picking out all of the colors. We had originally discussed going with a greige (brown greige) for our modern farmhouse style we were going for. And since we weren’t replacing the floors, and have a stone fire place, we needed something to go with that feel. As I looked at all of the paint colors and all of the choices my heart started to beat really fast. I was getting so nervous! There are SO MANY CHOICES! I mean come on, how many colors do you really need? And how do you know which type of paint is going to be best for your space? After about 30 minutes of freak out I decide to move on to outlet covers, because that should (key word, should) be a no brainer.
Before I move on, let me remind you I have NEVER done this before. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever even been in a home improvement store by myself before. Robby had gone around the house and drew what we needed – single, double, outlets, or light switches – and the amount of what we needed. Then I saw how many different outlet covers there were, and I immediately drew a blank. Are the ones we have square or round? Are they with screws or without? Do we have the small light switch or the large rectangle? I mean how am I suppose to remember all of these things? Why didn’t Robby tell me there were 500 choices instead of just 1? Why don’t we learn these things in school?
Needless to say, I was in the store for almost 2 hours and didn’t buy a thing. This day was a wash. I could not do this by myself. Anxiety: 1 Tiffany: 0
The very next day, Robby and I go into Home Depot, and within 10 minutes we have chosen our color and have 5 gallons of paint. Well that was much easier. We run around, grab a few other items and head off to get started. We designate each room so of course, I start on the guest (currently storage) room as my first room to paint. I don’t want to mess up other main areas of the house first, I need to get all of my ahh moments in this room. super excited, I start painting. As I get half way through we realize we don’t like the color, you know, the color we bought 5 gallons of. Maybe its just the lighting in the room, so I finish painting and do a few samples around the house. Nope, still don’t like it, no matter what lighting its in. How did our perfect greige in the store become this purple gray on our walls?
I went ahead and finished the guest bedroom with the color we didn’t love, but we learned our lesson (kind of), paint samples going forward. I went back and forth to our new neighborhood Home Depot at least twice a day for a week. I was determined to find a paint that was perfect! Even after I had brought home books, swatches, and color wheels, and thought we had found the perfect colors they looked completely different! It really does not make any sense to me! How is finding the perfect paint color so hard?!
(Update: It took me 14 paint sample colors to find my perfect gray!) Who knew that finding a paint color would be so stressful? My perfect gray was finally Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray
Once I got in the swing of things, I enjoyed painting. It took me way longer to paint the whole house than I originally thought, but I’m sure thats how most of this is going to go. Edging is the WORST! It takes so long, and most of the time that is where I had to do touchups. The painting tape didn’t really work for me, I won’t say the brands because it definitely could have been user error, but I stopped using it after the first room. If you happen to make it over you may see a few spots I need to touch up, but if you point them out I will hand you a paint brush 🤣.
I painted the whole house the same color – there was no way I was going through that again! With the exception of our bedroom and the 2 bathrooms. They are the same gray, just a few shades darker. The very nice men at Home Depot who saw me every day (sometimes two or three times) told me to bring in the 5 gallon paint and they would see what they could do. They did awesome! They put in a lot of effort in trying to make the greige I hated into a gray I loved. I felt so much better about not wasting so much paint. Eventually I may go back and repaint the guest (currently storage) room, but that is the last thing on my to-do list right now.
I have to say that going through and taking the time to pick out the exact color I wanted and painting the whole house was 100% worth it! I absolutely love the outcome and I get a huge sense of accomplishment when I look at it every day.
