One step forward, two steps back...

Hope you all had a fabulous long weekend! Our was spent unpacking A LOT, organizing, and purging of all the stuff we don't need.  There is a LONG way to go still, but any progress feels good!  In between all the unpacking, and seemingly endless errands, we enjoyed some pretty sunsets off the back deck...

... we also started up season 2 of House of Cards... in bed... with coffee.  Such an indulgence!  Side note: is anyone else as obsessed with Kevin Spacey as I am??? I love evil Kevin Spacey and his saucy southern accent.

And my honey got me some absolutely GORGEOUS flowers for Valentines day...

Aside from smelling the roses, admiring pretty sunsets and watching TV in bed, I made some progress on the living room... kind of.

I painted.

It all started out great! All the holes were getting patched, cracks, chips and wall scuffs from four years of wear and tear were getting covered up, and the paint was going on as a pretty light grey.

I even had a little fun with the paint before rolling the walls out...

All fun and games right??

Wrong. 

Somewhere between belting out a Taylor Swift song, and starting in on the second coat, the paint started to dry.

That's when things took a turn...

While I was confident at first, the paint was getting darker and darker as it dried... and more and more blue.

Nooooooooooo!

In direct light it wasn't so bad, but the blue (lavender almost) undertones were feeling very "baby boy's room".  Let me tell you, after painting all day, this was NOT the look I was hoping for.

Can we say dark dungeon??  Ugh, it is not good my friends.

Granted, it was a rainy day, and this picture was taken in the late afternoon... but still.  STILL.  It's like purple in the above picture!  Ick!

To add insult to injury, the warm lamp shades, tan sofa, and creme colored curtains I hung afterwards weren't helping matters...  The yellow tone of them accentuated the blue even more.

In this next picture you can see how yellow the curtains looked next to the "grey" and how blue the grey looked next to the creme colored curtains.

Ignore the weird colors in this photo - I used the HDR filter on my phone since the light from the windows washed everything out, but

That night I swapped out the creme colored curtains out for white ones, which dramatically improved things, but the walls still look very blue to me.

More bad iPhone pictures, but I just wanted you to see the grey walls in daylight with the white curtains.

The color is called Silver Screen (by Behr) and while the sample on the paint chip and on the lid of the can looked like a pretty pale grey, it reads as blue/purple on the walls.  Hello Monica Geller's apartment.

Right??

Needless to say, I'll be repainting in the near future.  For now it's livable, but I have grand visions for this space, and they don't involve lavender walls.

Ok, moving on....

Ok, so what do I see changing in this room??  A lot.

So far, we're just working with everything we had in our last apartment, but I'm pretty adamant about selling some of this stuff, and replacing it with new things - namely, a comfortable new sofa (this is non-negotiable), and a new coffee table.  Those are the big items on my checklist.

I've saved the below pictures to my phone for inspiration in this room.

The name of the game is light and bright... classic, clean lines, and natural fibers.  

In the below photo, I love the bright pretty linen curtains hanging in this room, and the neutral linen couch.  It's clean, and simple, and inviting.  Everything I want in our living room.

This next photo captures the simplicity and color palette I want - the true grey on the walls paired with lots of white.  It's clean, inviting, and easy on the eyes.

I love the white sofas, natural wood elements and lots of greenery... so pretty.

And then of course, this next photo is one I've posted before...

It's obviously decked out for Christmas (and has a lot going on because of that), but the pale pale PALE grey walls are perfection, along with the natural fiber rug, white sofa, and lots of black and white sprinkled throughout.

Now that I've made my mistakes with the paint on the first go round, I'm going for round 2, and this time, I'm determined to get the right color of grey.

The one thing I'm thrilled about so far??

My new natural fiber rug - it's looking very handsome with the cowhide.

Stay tuned for more updates my friends...