Lightening Up

Once upon a time, I liked the color red. I still do, actually. But, when we first moved into our house, I liked it a lot and wanted it in the house. Under the influence of bad advice (friends who shall remain unnamed ) I decided to paint my stairwell, my small hallway AND my foyer red. Dark red. Yes, I can hear the groans....

See??

(If you love this color and even have it in your house, please forgive me for this post... it just isn't my thing anymore but I am thrilled if you are thrilled. FYI: there were several people who looked at me like I was crazy for saying that I wanted to repaint- just sayin!)

Eventually I grew tired of it and realized my faux pas. The stairwell was the worst and was attacked first. The red had to go. There is no light in the stairwell, so paining it red really made it seem dark. That was replaced with Ben Moore's Whispering Spring (see the new and improved stairwell here).

The hallway and foyer were next up on the list. I enlisted my friend to help me pick out a color. Let's just say, that after about  50 paint samples on the wall, I had committed to a color (BM Raindance) only to discover (after buying a whole gallon of paint!!!) that it wasn't the one I loved. It was too blue!! This, people, is maddening. It makes you doubt any decision making abilities you ever had. It makes you crazy because you just spent $30 of good hard-earned money on a color that you will come to hate over time because you settled.

After a few hours of kicking myself in the head for picking the wrong color, I chose a color that had been sitting in my basement the entire time- I just hadn't tried it on the wall- don't ask.

The winner was: Benjamin Moore's Silver Sage. Just the kind of watery green I was looking for.

And here is the before, one more time:

And now, on a beautiful spring day here in Chicago: