The Blue & The Gray ~

Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).  Home improvement.  Our house is almost 33 years old and had paneling when it was built.  It was the style of the day.  All of that had been removed except for 2 bedrooms.

By the way, yesterday Don & I went to a movie and saw all the paneling you'll ever want to see...go see"Mud" with Matthew McConaughey!!   ;)

Back to my story...let's call one "the boys room" and the other, "Jen's room".  Even though  they're all grown up. Even though they do not live here anymore.  Even though we love them a lot, we don't want them back.  For good.  

So the boys room looked like this (ignore the tape, it's there to mark studs):

Jen's room had been painted, it was yellow.  So I brushed a few colors on the paneling to decide.  I knew I was going for a blue-gray.  (Note...you cannot put blue-gray on top of yellow)

Grays have undertones, people.  Some are pinkish, some are brown (griege), some are green and some are blue.  I wanted a rustic-coastal-cottage-beach-nautical look (got that?) and instead of sheetrock, we had beadboard put in with new trim, crown and base molding.  

In process:

While I happily brought home paint samples, my time was running out to choose a color. 

First off, it was Smoke.  Smoke looks good. Everyone says so.  No, Smoke looks too green to me.  It must be Mr. Rainier Gray, I can't live without Mt. Rainier Gray.  That's it.  For sure.  No. Too purplish.  With north facing windows, I needed to go somewhere else.  Silver Gray.  Good neutral color.  OK.

No, no and no. I kept coming back to my favorite....Benjamin Moore's Nimbus Gray.  

To quote Candice Olson:

Nimbus Gray:  As dense as the cloud for which it's named, this cool mid-tone blue-gray evokes memories of an early walk on a deserted wind-swept beach.

Well OK then.  

But Nimbus Gray was just a bit too dark. It's not enough that Benjamin Moore has thousands of colors, I have to create one of my own.  

I went to the paint store and told the guy that I wanted Nimbus Gray lightened 25% (only 75% of the colorant added).  He said, "Ma'am, if you do that you're basically going to have the next color up on the card, Silver Gray."

I knew he was wrong.  I had studied the formulas.  

Behold:



An excellent color. 

I love it.

Pretty!  Darkish in late evening.

And dreamy in the morning. 

Now I just need to get the beds fixed and some art on the walls.  I might even paint some furniture.  

~The End ~