Paint

When we renovated our two condos, our standard m.o. was to blitz the place white and add a few accent walls of color here and there. Tai had a great color palette in his first place that pre-dated me, and we generally stuck to it — a pretty yellow, a good blue, a nice red, a pleasant green, etc. When we moved from Wasatch Towers to Center Street, we basically used the same set of colors, but just shuffled the rooms around. I felt kind of lame about this, so when it was time to build the house and pick interior colors, rather than do the same thing again, we sort of just didn't do much. 

We have a giant wall in our dining area and upstairs hallway that is a mellow shade of blue. But because our first floor is so open, we didn't really do anything else. Then, we added a new couch and a giant painting. Then, a new table came along. We filled in with a few counter stools, and all of a sudden it felt like we actually lived in the place. It's been a slow process, but it finally felt like it was time to paint. 

We have two small bedrooms and our master bedroom upstairs; all needed some attention. The first bedroom is what is informally known as the guest room. (We have had house guests exactly twice.) I saw this photo in a recent Dwell and really loved the pop of dark blue with white all around. 

With our light bamboo flooring upstairs, it seemed like a good inspiration. So this is the current state of the guest room:

I wonder if all those unhung frames are what's keeping the Dwell editors from calling. Or maybe it's the exposed box spring and lack of bed comforter? So picky. (Also, I moved my husband's rifles to be out of the frame. But, Dwell, we can always put them back in for the magazine shoot.)

Whatever. Work in progress, right? 

As it turns out, the color I ended up using in the guest room is the darkest hue on the same palette as colonial blue — something called Hudson Bay. So waspy. I love it.

Then, we had the issue of the other small bedroom. I have a hard time with this one. This room was always intended to be our nursery. We have now lost two babies and don't know if/when we'll be able to have a child. It's been in limbo before we even finished the house, and it has stayed that way for the last two years. For my own sanity, I needed to pick a color and move on with the room so that it wasn't a white box waiting for something.

This room gets strong southern sun (our first choice of color — a bright orange — made the place look like a bag of Cheetos). I wanted a warm color, but had to balance that with the retinal ZOWIE factor from afternoon sun in the winter. So I went back to a tried and true yellow called morning sunshine.

And that room is even filthier than the other one, so that's all you get to see of it until I get my act together and figure out what to do with yarn and sewing supplies. (Also, I spy the makings of yet another project there on the floor. More on that later.) Overall, though, I'm really happy with the combination of the strong indigo in the guest room and this gentle yellow in the sewing room. It feels like a nice balance on the second floor.

Next up, bedroom and bathroom color. It's an exciting life, folks.