The Painting Post

Picking out paint colors with my new husband for our new loft, should be fun and easy. Turned out to be the complete opposite. Creating our own style for scratch when we both have strong opinions and our place is a beautiful empty canvas that could go so many ways was frustrating. Also having champagne taste a a beer budget doesn't help. I'll talk about the furniture decisions later. This post is about the system I created for choosing paint samples.

Step 1:
Go to your choice of paint supply store and pick up a ton of sample swatches in the range of colors you are considering and in a good paint brand. When it comes to paint, spending a little more money per gallon will save you time and number of coats, saving you money in the end.

Step 2:
Take your samples home and at different times of day hold them up to the wall, next to any furniture and draperies, next to and wall art, against the floor and in my case even against the ceiling, making notes directly on the sample cards as to what works where. Like I tell my art students, everyone has an eye for what looks good. Pick out your top favorites.

Step 3:
Go back to the store and buy samples in your favorites. In our case that was 6 total for our 4 areas.

Step 4:
Paint sample squares of the paint at different parts of the wall. Since we had so many we made counting marks under the squares and wrote the corresponding number on the sample jar. I just used my artist brushes to paint the squares. Live with the samples for a while and see what works in all different times of day. If you are lucky, you will pick a winner for your wall and move on to step 6.

Step 5 (in my case):
Attend your condo association board meeting where they discuss the new design plans for all the common areas. Turns out their color pallet is way too similar to what we had picked. My husband decided we had to revisit all our color choices. So we repeated steps 1-4 and even made a few last minute choices for samples to buy while we were there ready for them to be whipped up. We ended up getting 7 more samples. I don't suggest ever getting this many samples, it got way too expensive. We also had to switch to roman numerals to keep track.

(The Kitchen stumped us, I just decided to go back to white.)

Step 6:
Go buy your paint and supplies. We went with a paint that has primer in it. It took one good solid coat and one light touch up coat to do the job. The second coat is mostly to go over those few spots that show after the first coat is dry. Word to the wise, the eco friendly roller sponges don't spread paint nicely. When rolling back and forth, they tended to pick the paint back up. Also, buy an angled brush for the edging, it's the only way to go.

Step 7:
Show it off. So happy with the grey, it's what's going in the TV area as well.

-Home Sweet Loft