Slow Transformation Part I: Painting the Bathroom

Last week, I began telling you our month-long saga of redoing our downstairs den. I removed wallpaper and washed the walls, so it was time for priming.

Priming was not too bad except for the windows. Please, for the sake of people who come behind you, never paint your windows anything other than a neutral. Dark blue is impossible to cover up, especially when you're painting with a small sash brush. After Thursday night priming, Friday night I finally got to put the color on the walls.

We always have a hard time choosing color, partially because instead of the red, blue, green, and white you learned as a child, paint companies want to make sure you have the exact color that fits your lifestyle, so they offer 20,000 choices so you don't live your lifestyle you're so busy trying to figure out which white is too white. We wanted a flavor of tan downstairs, a cooler tan without the rich undertones so many have, so we dickered back and forth and ultimately settled on a paint from Benjamin Moore called "Coastal Path." We always buy Behr paint and they usually can match any company we bring in, but for some reason this time the paint person said they would get as close as they could. After 20 minutes of fiddling, the color was pretty close and with two restless children, we were ready to head on home. So all week long we wondered what the paint would end up looking like on the wall. It looked like this:
It's a pretty color, but after watching it for a day, we both decided it was too dark and a bit too orange (sorry the flash I used too out some of the deeper tones in the color). That meant those three gallons we bought on sale were now useless (anyone want some Coastal Path?) We went back to dickering over colors and finally decided on one called "Shaker Beige," a lighter, more sandy color than before (the window wall is the new color):
But we wanted to make sure before committing so I bought a tester, painted one wall, and we watched it over the day. Satisfied, I went back and bought an entire gallon and painted the bathroom:After some trim touch up last night, the bathroom is finally done paintwise. Flooring comes in a few weeks. Next up, we start the den walls.