Modest Exploration of the Color Wheel

We are almost finished with gray...almost, one room to go.  But we needed to move on and get paint on all the areas that we will be tiling just in case we don't finish. Have to make sure those areas get done so we don't get any on the tile.

Anyway, we've moved on to other colors, Hot Springs and Beach House to be specific (Valspar color names I believe, but color matched again at Sherwin-Williams).  First I'm going to put up some pictures of the other gray areas I haven't shown you yet. Then I'll move on to the new colors and explain them.

Here are the columns painted gray.

Here's the area over the kitchen.

Fireplace

Coming into the hallway from the garage

Hallway looking out of Bedroom #2 (aka the nursery) into the garage.

Upstairs bathroom, looking in.

Upstairs bathroom, looking out

 The columns again

Going down to the basement

Looking back up from the basement

Turning the corner at the stairs in the basement

The mini-hallway across from the stairs, looking into Bed #3

The family room in the basement, just trimmed in color

The future bar area, also just trimmed

1/3 done with that wall of the basement

And it's done...just has to dry now.

Looking at the stair landing in the basement

And that wall is now 3/3 done :)

OK that's about all the gray excitement I have for now. So on to the post's namesake, other colors.

HOT SPRINGS!

I promise, it's not gray. It's actually greenish gray, he he he.  So I'm into gray, so what? It's my house and I'll paint it whatever I want.  (Notice I say whatever I want, not we want.  That's because Casey has officially agreed that I get to make all the decorating decisions and he won't say anything as long as I get no input on whatever truck he wants to buy in the future.  With that being said, I'm going to have some kick a$$ schoolhouse pendant lights over my island now that he originally had vetoed...they're back in baby. But I digress.) Plus it's really not that gray looking in person.

Master bath, vanity area freshly painted

Another view of the vanity area, also a view of the toilet room.  We ran out of paint and had to get more, hence the half done wall.

Another vanity area view

Master closet, our first dry shot. Lighter here obviously because the light is better from the window, but it is lighter once it's dry too.

Another view of the master closet.

Same angle, just without the window in there to mess with the camera's interpretation of the amount of light in the shot.

Here's the vanity area again, but dry this time. See, it did lighten up.  It's still a little dark in there though, but once we get some lights up it will be perfect.

The toilet room in the master bath

BEACH HOUSE!

The laundry room looking in

I swear it's the same room, just looking out.  The first picture its a better representation of what the color actually looks like in person.

Again, same color just in the office, which is in the basement. Kinda looks a little gray there.  It's not, not even a little, I promise.  It must have been the lighting again.  That first picture is really the most accurate.

 Office again

Running out of paint...yet again.

And Sherwin-Williams here we come again! We're out. One more gallon should finish this area and the closet.

Now here's the question for my followers...or anyone else who wants to put in their two cents.

Casey and I aren't sure about what to do with the ceiling in the master.  He doesn't think we should paint any part of the tray ceiling the same as the walls. He thinks it should just be ceiling white.  I've numbered the areas so you can see what I'm talking about...

First off, the wall area marked #4 will be painted a blue color and we agree that the ceiling areas, noted with #1 will remain unpainted like the rest of the house.

The debate:

He says areas marked 2 and 3 should be ceiling white. Ponder that a moment. We'll call it option 1.

I say we do one of three things...

Option 2: Areas 2 get painted the wall color (blue) and area 3 gets painted ceiling white...or...

Option 3: Area 3 gets painted blue and areas 2 get painted ceiling white.

Option 4: Paint all of areas 2 and 3 blue.

Let me know what you think. Post a comment and tell me which option you like...or heck, you can really muddle things up and throw in another option to consider. If you do that then it had better be worth it, because it will just add to my irritation with not knowing what to do with this.

And something to end on...some reptile or amphibious creature (I believe I've mentioned it in another post) has laid eggs in one of the puddles around the house.  They hatched the other day and now we have this...Casey thinks its tadpoles. I kinda think it's cool, part of living in the country... unless someone says it's unsafe in which case we'll take care of it.

Have a great Memorial Day tomorrow everyone.  Hope you've enjoyed the weekend so far!

That's so Gray.

So due to a miscommunication, we will not be tiling this week.  But, since we took off for the specific purpose of working on the house...we have decided to start primering the walls.  The cool part about that is that the primer we have is tinted to the color we will be ultimately painting the walls (Color: Gull by Valspar I believe but don't quote me on that. Sherwin Williams color matched a paint chip I brought in), so its basically the color we want.  We started on the kitchen/living/dining room on the upstairs.  Took us most of the day to not even finish that portion. Frankly, that fresh drywall soaks up paint like a drunk in a wine barrel (had to reuse that gem, Rach).  So it took a while...

When we first started painting, I was really, really worried that it was too dark.  I chose a gray color for the main portion of the house, upstairs and down.  An error in choice here would have been disastrous.  Fear not.  It rolled on fairly dark, then (here comes the real worry part) got DARKER as it sat a bit, then to my utter relief lightened to the perfect color as it dried.  Whew. Sigh of relief.

Here are a few pics of our adventures yesterday.

The real worry point was the edging portion.  See how much darker the ceiling and corner portions look?  As Casey rolls it on, you can see that its rolling on lighter than the edges, which have soaked in a bit and haven't started to dry yet in the pic.

Here you can see that it dries lighter.  The darker portions are still wet.  I love the color.

And here is one I took closer to the end of the day.  The light in the room isn't ideal for taking pictures (it would probably be fine if I could figure out how to use my camera properly) so it looks darker in the room in the picture than it does in real life.  Trust me. It does not feel dark in that room, which was a worry with choosing gray paint!

So the hubs had to go back to work today, and I'm commandeering the help of my mom and sister-in-law.

In other news, I have ordered the concrete stain and I must say I'm very pleased with the place I ordered it from.  Turns out I didn't select the cheapest shipping method like I thought I had.  This is a product you can't get in my area.  So the store called me and asked if I minded to change my shipping method to the cheaper option because it would only add a day or so and would be about $100 cheaper...how did I miss that price difference, I don't know.  So thanks to the Natural Abode for saving me some money.

I also ordered a sample of Waterlox so we can start choosing the stain for the hardwood floors.  Looking forward to that too!

Anyway, I'm going to go get ready to start painting again today.

Bonus Post for Today

So I apparently felt like I should officially catch everyone up to the end of this weekend and I am now posting a bonus, 4th post for today.  We spent the weekend laying underlayment so we can lay tile all this week.  I took off for this so hopefully we can be productive.  Of course, we haven't got any tile at the house yet so we're on stand still until we can get some. Hopefully, our builder can work it out so that we can at least get enough to start tomorrow.

Here are the fruits of our labor for yesterday and today though.

Master shower entry, this is what I'm calling the dry zone of our walk in shower.

The rest of the master bath.

The other view of the master bath.

The kitchen.

Another view of the kitchen.

And apparently I didn't care very much about the laundry room or the second bathroom.  Oh well, trust me when I say that we also put underlayment in those rooms as well.  Long weekend.  We got to the house around 9:30am on Saturday and rolled out around 7:00pm.  A little later today, but still got there by 10:00am and got done and out of there by 5:00pm.  I think the best part of this whole thing is that we did it all without running water.  No big deal right? Wrong. Can't mix thinset without water.  So what did our ingenious builder do? He had us use the massive puddles around the house as a water source since we don't have electricity to our well pump yet. Ha. Worked like a charm.  Only down side was that we found some sort of amphibious creature's eggs in one of the puddles...kinda gross.  We might be supporting tadpole production.  And I think if I see another engorged dog tick in my house I'm going to scream and shoot the next wild dog that roams into our yard.  They have obviously been making themselves at home in the house at night and depositing all sorts of full ticks.  SO GROSS. I know I will be living in the country, but seriously...you don't understand how many we have found either squished on the floor or full on its back with its little legs trying to turn itself over with no hope of ever doing so.  Not sure when we will/should do this in the process, but I want to have a bug guy come out and just make sure the inside is free of the pests before we move in. Call me a spoiled brat, but I want my home to be as bug free as possible.

So, the next postings (who knows when that will be) will be of the tile work we get done.  Cross your fingers that we can get the tile in so I can actually make use of my week off!

Siding

So the siding is almost done.  So stinkin' close.  The masonry guys come in next and put up the stone veneer stuff and then we get to paint...good times.  We went with a Hardiboard knock off called NichiBoard at the recommendation of our buddy and siding guy.  

Here's a few pics of the front, the back is pretty close, but not quite. They are still working on the the porch area.

So here's a run down of what you're looking at and the plans for color. On the bay window, where there's board and batten the color will be Colonial Gray (it's kinda taupe-like).  On the shingle portion it will be a dark blue color, can't remember the name of the color right off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to go look at the paint cans in the garage.  The lap siding will be Woodlawn Snow and it's kinda gray-cream looking.  Everything that still has the Tyvek showing will be a blueish-gray mix of stone.

Also notice, we got our garage doors in :) I dig 'em.

And here's a quick reference for how it used to look from the front.

Oh, and they got the back porch soffit in partially too. Just gotta finish up the sides of that, get the rest around the edge and put one last piece of lap siding up at the top and we're done!

Sampling Stains

Wow, how time flies.  Can't believe it's been so long since I've posted...sorry, lame joke.

Here's some shots of us testing out the concrete stains for the basement.  We had to go to the rooms with bad lighting to sample because all the rooms with good lighting have been covered with paper to prevent the sheetrockers from making too big of a mess.

We cleaned two areas to sample, different natural light in both so at least we could get a better idea of what they looked like.  We plan on using a product called Soycrete because, as amateurs, I would prefer to stay away from the toxic stuff.  We will be using Eco-Etch to prepare the concrete to take a stain, then the Soycrete stains to color it, followed by Acri-Soy to seal it.  The color samples are Sandstone, Espresso, Desert Mountain and Charcoal Black.

Here's the area prepped with Eco-Etch.

Here it is with the stains on it. Top left is Sandstone, top right is Desert Mountain, bottom left is Espresso, and bottom right is Charcoal Black.

Had a hard time making sure we could see it all...it was pretty dark, and all the pictures showed a glare from the flash.

Here's the orientation of the colors for the next few pics:

Desert Mountain

Sandstone                        Charcoal Black

Espresso

And here are those areas after the sample. 

Cleans up like it was never there as long as you get it before it dries.

We liked the Charcoal Black the best...or at least we were able to agree upon Charcoal Black.  Haven't ordered it yet, but I'm not overly worried about that.  We won't be able to stain the basement floors until we can get the house fully sealed off from the outside and the A/C running...that floor sweats like a fat kid in PE when it gets too warm.  I'll post pics of the actual staining process once we get to that point.