The Martin Home: Painting the Downstairs

I had been wanting to paint the downstairs a nice chocolatey taupe for a while, but we dodn't have extra money for paint. What I did have was a lot of mis-mixed and sample paints that were taupe-ish. My sweet friend Brenda over at Fresh Redesign recommending mixing my own paint.

So we did. In a regular bucket I just started pouring what I had.

When the color looked nice, I grabbed a paint brush and started trying out the color. It turned out to be kind of a yucky brown color, as they sometimes can be. So we added more blacks and greys until the color was just right.

We tested the paint we were mixing in lots of different areas of the room to make sure it would look good in the different lights.

So this was the kitchen and living room prior to the paint job. I really love taupe with aquamarine and green accents. I was so excited to pair the wall color with my beloved globes (oh yes, I have four *ahem) and vintage water jug.

And the living room prior to painting.

Now that the color was right we could get cracking. Our entire downstairs is one open room and not super large, so I needed to paint it one color to keep it cohesive and not look cluttered.

This is our partial wall of the kids' heights. It was so hard to paint over it even though we measured and documented the growth. I just had this fear that I would lose these precious measurements forever!

Our first completed wall was with the board and batten, which I absolutely adore. The wall color with the crisp white and oil rubbed bronze hardware just really appeals to me.

These pictures came from my sad old phone camera. They are very low quality, but they captured things I didn't get on the digital.

Here is how it's looking now. I think the color really adds a bit more sophistication to the reddish cabinets. I like the wood grain, but the cabinets have always felt old fashioned and not in a good way.