A Little Bit of this... A Little Bit of that...

Hello hello!  Hope you all had a great weekend!

I feel like the last week has been a complete whirlwind, between our trip to Mexico - which now feels like it happened about 4 months ago - my actual birthday, catching up on work, and some projects around the house.

Can I please be back here already?? This was the view from our room, and the porch was so private and lovely...

Could be a Corona ad, right??

Seriously the perfect way to ring in the big 3-0.

On a different note, our apartment is really coming along!

I need to dig out the DSLR camera from whatever box it's still packed in to take some GOOD photos of the progress we've made on the house so far.

Remember how I'd painted the living room the wrong color grey?

Well I lived with it for about a month, and on Sunday couldn't take it anymore.  I spent most of the day yesterday re-painting, and it's now a softer, lighter, brighter color of grey, and it's pretty much perfection.

Here is a progress picture...

In this picture, you can REALLY see how much darker (and more blue) the first color of grey was.  It looks almost purple in comparison to the first coat of the new paint.

The next picture shows the final "after" of the paint... so light and bright and neutral, which is exactly what I was hoping for!

I snapped this picture really quick on my phone, in the late afternoon when this side of the house gets darker, but even in the low light, it still is so bright!  This color has changed the entire feel of the room!

Remember this post when I had been going back and forth between two shades of grey - either Grey Owl or Intense White, both from Benjamin Moore.  Well, when I went to have the paint mixed up, I walked into the store with my mind set on getting a gallon of Grey Owl at 50% tint - this was the color I'd painted the dining room in our last house, and I figured at 50% tint, it would be even brighter and reflective.

Despite my original decision, I left the store with a gallon of Intense White.

I'm not one to usually change my mind last minute - especially after agonizing over a decision - but I chose Intense White over Grey Owl for a few reasons.

First, the guy mixing the paint said that there is no "recipe" for mixing a color at 50% tint, so the result wouldn't necessarily be a lighter version of Grey Owl - it might end up more blue, or more beige than intended, and that all he could do was mix an approximation of the 50% tint, and record exactly what was mixed in case I wasn't happy.

Too risky.  No thank you.

I do not want to paint our living room the wrong color for a second time, and end up needing to paint again.

After that conversation, Intense White was the obvious choice for me - it is actually on the same paint chip as Grey Owl, but is one shade lighter.

The Benjamin Moore paint guy also taught me about the light reflection value (LRV) assigned to each Ben Moore paint color. The number indicates how much light gets reflected vs. absorbed by the paint color.  The first grey I'd painted our living room had a LRV value of ~61, meaning that ~40% of all light got absorbed by the paint color, thus making the room feel darker than it was.  Grey Owl had a value of ~64 (slightly better but not that much) and Intense White had the most light reflection of all these options with a value ~74.

This little tid-bit of info has changed my life.  The light index is a game changer!!

Anyway, I am thrilled with how it all came out, and can now focus on other living room updates I've been wanting to make... like on the fireplace... coffee table... side tables... and a new sofa (how long have I been talking about a freaking new sofa???)

Another sneak peak I'll be posting about soon?

Oh yeahhhhhh!!!  Can you guess where this is?

Happy Monday!
xoxo