Things of note in this picture:
- The walls - As I’ve said before, We are both big fans of neutrals. So, choosing gray as the color to paint our living was an easy decision. Finding the right shade wasn’t quite as easy. I was pretty anxious about not painting test swatches and ending up with a shade that was too green or too blue or too purple… too not neutral. Unfortunately, our budget coupled with a lack of transportation and conveniently located paint stores meant I had no choice but to trust the paint chip, the test lighting in store, and our instincts. We went with Pittsburgh Paint’s Steeple Gray in semi-gloss. Though, we’ve only painted the one wall so far, I’m pretty happy with our choice. At the end of the day it’s the perfect chameleon shade. Some times it looks the teeniest bit green, sometimes it looks the slightest bit blue. Most of the time it’s just a medium gray that provides a backdrop of sophistication in front of which our colorful furniture and belongings can shine.
- The side table - As witnessed from previous photos our beloved side table was pretty scratched to hell. The blonde finish was shredded all across the top revealing the natural wood underneath. While, typically, I am a big fan of blonde woods it wasn’t going to fit with our other living room furniture plans. Thus, I decided to take on the task of refinishing and painting it. A word to the wise, disassemble furniture as much as you can before you paint it. I didn’t and ultimately regret not doing so. While painting it, to get the two tone look I taped off the top panels and painted the dark color first. We choose Pittsburgh Paint’s Black Forest in a high gloss enamel. It was two shades darker than Steeple Gray on the same paint chip. It reads a lot more blue to the eye than I’d like but I don’t dislike it enough to even begin to consider refinishing it again. Once the several coats of Black Forest dried I removed the tape and retaped to do the two lighter panels. For that we went with PPs Fling Green. What we essentially looked for was a color similar to the cyan of American Spirits cigarette packs or Bianchi Celeste. Now for some ugly truths. Because I didn’t disassemble the table and instead just taped off the panels, while painting I experienced leaks under the tape, meaning I had to go through and re-do and clean up most of the edges by hand. I’m still not thrilled with the lack of crispness. Chris assures me however that upon first glance most people wouldn’t even notice the little imperfections. So, I’m doing my best to get over it.
Tech Note: I didn’t like how desaturated this was looking when viewed in Google Chrome, so I upped the saturation and vibrance a bit to compensate. If you use an alternate browser and this looks a bit garish, my apologies.
