Paint Woes

We are having the hardest time picking out a beige color for the walls in our loft, dining room, and the living room wall that has the fireplace. We found a color we thought we liked at Lowes last weekend. The color is called Dust Bunny, and it was in their American Tradition brand. Tuesday evening Joe painted a portion of the loft and I hated it right away. It reminded me too much of a tan Barbie doll. Yuck!

We went to Home Depot Wednesday night and looked at the Behr paints, but making a decision in the store proved too difficult, so we brought a bunch of sample cards home. We took them upstairs and compared them against the door trim, which is white, to see what kind of contrast they would offer. We didn’t want a saturated look, but likewise we didn’t want something so subtle that you have to wonder what color it is.

We thought we found a winner in Behr’s Tuscan Beige (PWN-62), but once we got to the store last night to buy it, we changed our minds, and went with a color called Sunstone Cove instead. Joe painted the wall next to the old color and it looks so much better. It has a slight yellow tint to it, but I still like it. He did the cutting in last night in the loft, and will be finishing it up over the weekend.

I still don’t know what color we’re going to use downstairs. While I like the new color for the loft, I’m not sure I want it downstairs. I really want a beige color, but we seem to have the worst luck picking out brown tones that we like. They all seem to have too much blue, red, or yellow in them. A similar thing happened when I decided I wanted a beige bathroom when we lived in the apartment. We quickly realized it wasn’t working out, and went with blue instead.

At this point we technically have two useless cans of paint: one in a dark sage, and the other in that Dust Bunny color. We almost had three, as we had purchased another can of the lighter sage we used in the kitchen, but we’ve decided to paint some more of the kitchen with that color since it would flow better color-wise. We’re doing the wall above the cabinets all the way around. The backsplash will be painted white. Everything that appears white, with the exception of the living room (thank god since it has vaulted ceilings), really is a blue-ish tint because the walls used to be royal blue and the former homeowners painted over it, but didn’t use enough coats to stop it from bleeding through.

I’m just happy we saved so much by Joe doing the painting. Our new next door neighbors paid $2000 for someone to paint their place. Yikes!