Shades of Greige

I've been a bad, bad blogger.  And I've maybe been a lazy homeowner.  Since we got our kitchen to a usable state, we stopped.  Nothing much has been going on around here - in the home improvement area anyway.  We have been enjoying a bit of a break from the work we do around the house.  It been nice to have a break because the kitchen had been such HUGE project, and while it's not *done*, the bulk of the inconvenient/messy/frustrating work is over. YAY!

The break is over and I've switched gears to something completely different.  The living room.

Meet the living room as it was when we bought the house in 2007.

A few things we did first: Mirror, Wallpaper & Carpet = Gone.  That table is gone too (although it did hang out in the basement for a long time).  The front door and windows have been replaced.  And we painted.  The paint color I chose was called "Coastal Sand".  It's a neutral brown, sort of a medium toned tan.  It's the color in my parents' family room.  It worked because it went with everything.  It was fine.

Fast forward to a few years after that when we painted our bedroom a color called "Kindling Wood".  This was before this color family got trendy and got the name, but it's a shade of "greige".  I remember as i was rolling it on, I said to Jason, "I really wish we had put this color downstairs because I love it."  And I do still.  Truly, ever since we painted the greige in our bedroom, I've hated the color in our living room.  Hate is a strong word, but maybe I knew the tan color just wasn't it.  

So last week while I was procrastinating writing a paper for an education class I'm taking, I decided it would be the best time to paint the living room.  And since the Home Depot guys convinced us that we would need 5 gallons of paint to do one bedroom, we have had 2.5 gallons of this paint in our basement.  So I did it.  I shook the heck out of that can of paint, grabbed a brush and cut-in cup and went to town.  

Here's where we are now:

I LOVE IT.  It's so much more the feel that I was going for.   This angle is the same as the last of the 3 living room pics from 2007, just so you know what you're looking at.  And sorry for the weird shot - I"m trying to shoot around the Christmas tree :)

Here's a peek at this year's tree compared to last year's tree so you can see the old and the new colors side by side.

And is it crazy to decide to repaint the living room a month before Christmas?  I guess a little crazy, but it's totally worth it.