I knew it wouldn’t be long before I had another update on our bedroom.  I decided to just go for it and paint the room to get everything else moving.

After living with a few paint swatches taped to the walls for the last couple of weeks I decided on Sherwin Williams ‘Peppercorn’ (SW7674).  While the internet is a great resource for paint colors, it’s so hard to pick colors for spaces based on rooms you see online.  For example, one of the colors that I thought would be perfect was ‘Naval’ based on Earnest Home Co. Erin’s entry.  But when I watched the swatch at different times of the day in my room, it read too cool.  And not to mention, when Katie from Bower Power picked ‘Peppercorn’ to paint her basement storage room floors, it looked more gray than I wanted for my room.  It definitely made me second guess my choice. 

I decided to go for it and I’m so glad I did.  It went on very gray, but dried a dark, inky blue and looks awesome!  Seriously, I’m obsessed with the new color.  Every time I go upstairs I stop in to see the new color.

I’m even more impressed with myself because I decided I wanted to fix all the holes from the various frames before painting.  Usually, I would just let Mike handle this, but for some reason I wanted to do it.  I’m happy to report you can’t see any evidence of the old holes after painting.  Here’s how the room looked before I changed anything:

And, after removing all the frames and spackling the holes:

And, now after 2 coats of ‘Peppercorn’

The pine bed looks much better against the darker color now.

I’ve never painted a dark color like this, and it was a little different than what I’m used to.  First the guy at Sherwin Williams said I should go with 2 gallons because the deep base paint used for dark colors is more translucent which means it may not go as far as a light color.  I now have 1 1/4 cans left.  Seriously, I didn’t even use a whole can, and I did 2 full coats.  Usually, I’m able to get away with maybe a coat and a half.  As in I have to edge again, but I just fill in where it looks a little thin.  For this color, I needed to recover everything.  It was the most tedious wall painting I think I’ve ever done.  But I wanted to make sure it looked good, because in this room the walls are the original plaster and the dark color was going to show any imperfections, (Mike is more concerned than I am about this, I call it character!).

I did this last Wednesday since we were out of town this weekend and I joked that it was like drinking as you get older: not something I should do on a weeknight, and it takes much more time to recover than it used to.  I was sore all day Thursday!

I knew the dark color wouldn’t be as overwhelming as Mike was concerned with, (but at this point he knew I was sold on the idea so there was little he could do, also he’s happy with the rest of the house, so he knows to trust my vision!), because our trim and base boards provide so much white accents.  There’s 2 windows and 2 doors and the room is so tiny.  Also, it’s a room we prefer it to be dark, so we’re looking forward to closing the curtains and sleeping in on the weekends.

I’m obviously loving the first step of this room refresh and can’t wait to finish bringing in the new elements.  I plan to hem the curtains this week and will have an update on those soon.