Project Numero Uno: Freshen up main floor.

All kidding aside, I would like to accomplish something while Gavan strolls the black sand of Muriwai Beach, mostly as a way to stop feeling sorry for myself at having been left behind.

One idea I had that seemed reasonably easy to tackle alone was to repaint the main living areas of our main floor. We live in a 950 sq. ft. bungalow that was built in 1973. Some renovations were completed when we bought our home in 2006, just days before our wedding, but there is still lots to be done. Since we moved in, we have transformed the two bedrooms back into the original three, to accommodate the rapid growth of our family, and all of those rooms have been freshly painted.

The living room, kitchen, entrance and hallway are all the same shade of taupe, painted by the previous owners. There is nothing really wrong with it, in fact it is a perfectly suitable neutral backdrop for most of our belongings. Unfortunately, now that I am home most of the live long day, occupied with keeping small children and pets alive, I have come to notice that it feels very dull and dingy in our house, especially now that the long warm days of summer have arrived. The showhome-standard color of our walls are cloying and depressing, especially with the lack of natural light in our east facing home. To help summer-ize our space I did replace my winter season brown velvet curtains with some gauzy white ones, and plan to swap out my silk cushions for something cotton and fresh, but nothing quite lightens a space like pale walls.

I have thought a lot about what color I would like to replace our muddy-grey with, and I think I finally settled on the perfect replacement neutral care of House and Home magazine's June Issue:


I know it's really hard to get an idea of a paint color from a computer monitor, but I think it's exactly what I have in mind! What do you think? Any suggestions for me of your own favorite blue-grey color?