One Room Challenge, week 2: Painting

For week two of the One Room Challenge I have some painting progress for you. 

Since this is no longer a dining room, as it was when the house was originally built, we ripped down the chair molding and painted the room white.  For months we had a bracket in the wall that we couldn't remove (see it above the window in the upper left?), but luckily the painter was able to get it out and patch the hole it left behind.

When we moved in last summer, the entire house was painted Navajo White with miles upon miles of pine trim and honey oak cabinets and badly stained mahogany closet doors, and every room in the house had a country plaid or country floral or country something.   Some people like that look.  I....don't.  

For new readers, last summer we moved from California to New Jersey two weeks after I had a spine fusion surgery.  I was not/am still not allowed to paint anything.  I can't get my arms over my head much, so I don't know how I would paint anything anyhow.  This has been incredibly frustrating, because Old Uninjured Me would have had this entire house painted from top to bottom in a few weeks.  New Weak Me has been spent a lot of time on the sofa.  

Thus, we decided to hire out having the house painted.  Since paying someone else to do stuff you can do yourself for free costs $$$$$$, we decided to start with only painting the first floor walls, baseboards, and door casings.  To save money, we decided not to have the windows or doors painted yet.  

I wanted to paint the whole interior of the house the same color, and I wanted to have very very very light gray walls with bright white trim.  

Did you know that Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams paint samples costs $8?  My plan was to go to Home Depot, have them color match the BM and SW paint samples in their $4 samples, then narrow it down to the ones I really liked and get those in the actual BM and SW paint samples to be sure it was the right color, so that I wasn't spending gazillions of dollars on paint samples. 

I went through 52 gray paint samples.  Every single one of them was WRONG WRONG WRONG.  

Apparently I don't like gray.  

I gave up on gray and went with a very light creamy white for the walls (Sherwin Williams Westhighland White) and Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace for the trim.  

But you already had a yellowy white in the original paint, you are thinking.  

NO THIS ONE IS BETTER.  See?

Or as my children said "....it looks exactly the same."  

The Mister noted that the new bright white looked SO FABULOUS on the door casings, that clearly, we should go ahead and paint the windows.

 Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I booked that immediately.  Luckily no one from Apartment Therapy will be reading about this wood desecration. 

I feel perhaps my pictures would be more majestic had I actually taken some with the intent to publish them on the blog....except I took zero before pictures, the ORC wasn't even on my radar last month when all this painting was going on, and all the before/during pictures I have were progress pictures that I took on my phone to text to my husband.  Hence the boxes of girl scout cookies front and center.  I suppose I could move all the new furniture out and take some posed progress pictures, but that requires a level of commitment I do not currently possess.  Let me know if you want to buy some girl scout cookies.