Nursery Update: Paint

At long last, the nursery is finally painted!  To be honest, I actually painted it a few weeks ago, but I've been so busy with other projects that I forgot to blog about it....oops!!   And since nothing else was really going on in the nursery, I figured that it could wait while I updated you on some other house-related projects.  Now that I'm sitting here writing it, though, I wish I had done it sooner since we picked up all of the furniture yesterday and I CANNOT WAIT to share that with you in the next few days. 

But first things first: the paint.  When we first moved into the house last February, the office looked like this.......

Yea, I know you are thinking....the blue molding is timeless.  Why would I ever want to change it, right?  Um, not so much.  So our first step was to transform the room into an office/potential future nursery.  It's hard enough to determine the colors you want in ANY room, nevermind the future room for your unconceived and not-even-off-birth-control child.  In fact, its pretty impossible.  Even when we knew we were pregnant and having a boy, we still went through a ton of color and design choices (which you can read more about here and here).  So, we ultimately decided to go with something calm and neutral and hope that it could fit into a potential nursery design in the future.  The colors we chose were "Restful" by Behr in eggshell finish for the walls and off-the-shelf white semi-gloss Behr paint for the molding and trim.  Here is what it looked like after just two coats of the wall color and three coats of the trim color.

I definitely liked it, and it served us well for over a year (it truly was a calming color, as the name implies)......but as soon as we found out we were having a boy, I couldn't stop thinking about the color blue.  I know its cliche, and green is totally perfect for a boy as well, but I just kept dreaming about the room being blue.  In my mind at the time (granted, it was a crazy, hormone-ridden, full-time nauseated mind), I thought that boys room "should" be blue.  Looking back, I definitely don't think that is true though.  I would have been really happy just keeping the green walls, or painting them a cheery yellow or even a light gray, but once I got that first vision of navy and yellow in my mind, there was no stopping me. 

So, a few testers later (in order from the top, Blue Zephyr by Olympic, Pacific Coast by Valspar, Mysteria by Behr, and Windsor Haze by Behr), we ultimately decided on the second one down from the top: Pacific Coast.  We were going with the most navy-ish color possible, so ultimately, Blue Zephyr (the top one) and Windsor Haze (the bottom one) both had too much green in them and Mysteria (the third one down) was a little lighter than we wanted.  We probably could have tested more colors, since I taped up about 20-30 different paint chips to the wall over the course of a few weeks, but these were the finalists.  I felt like Goldilocks when I eventually made my decision.....this one is too cold, this one is too hot......this one is JUST RIGHT!!  Pacific Coast had the same deep tones and saturation as a traditional navy blue, but just a tad bit lighter.  It was love at first stroke sight.

And since I wanted to be the one to do the painting, I did a little online research on some no-VOC options available to us.  We were thinking about going with either the Martha Stewart line from Home Depot or the Valspar line from Lowe's since they are both low-VOC, but after hearing a few recommendations for and reading a bunch of positive reviews on Sherwin Williams Harmony Interior Acrylic Latex paint, we opted for the latter.  It is no-VOC (which is even better than Martha Stewart and Valspar) and it has very low odor.  Pretty amazing, right?  Well, my mother didn't think so.  Despite its noteworthy accolades, my mother still made me wear a mask and open up all the windows in the house (yes, even the ones that were not in the room that we were painting in).  Haha.  I guess its better to be safe than sorry when you are pregnant.....and no matter how old you are or whether you're carrying a child of your own, you still have to listen to your mother.  No ifs, ands or buts.... 

So we went down to our local Sherwin Williams store to pick up a gallon of paint color-matched to the Pacific Coast swatch and they were, as luck would have it, hosting a paint and stain sale that very day!  So we were able to get the normally $36/gallon paints for just $22/gallon with the discount.  It was a great deal!  I'm not sure the promotion is still going on, but you could always ask if they are planning to have another one in the coming weeks and hold off on your project until then.  And after using the product myself, I would highly recommend it to anyone....even if you aren't pregnant.  When its not on sale, its definitely a little more expensive than Behr, Valspar or Olympic at Home Depot and Lowe's (respectively), but you also have the piece of mind that it is not harmful to you or the environment and it doesn't leave a lingering odor behind when it dries.  It's a win-win!  There is actually only one thing that I will "warn" you about before you go out and grab some of it.....keep in mind that they do not carry the Harmony line in anything less than gallon-size.  We found this out the hard way.  The room was 95% painted with two coats, but we needed just a little bit more to touch up a few spots and finish one corner of the room.  Normally I would run out to grab an extra quart of paint, but not with this line.  Maybe they will add this to their line-up in the future (since it is a relatively new product) but at the moment,  you have to splurge for a whole new gallon of paint even if you only need a little.  The way I look at it though, at least I have some touch-up paint for DIY projects in the future.  I'm sure I will use it eventually, but I wanted to make sure that you knew this little tid bit of information before you go out and start a project with this line of paint.

So, after two coats, we ended up with this.....

I am officially in love.  The pictures aren't great (and definitely don't do it justice) but I can tell you that its a beautiful color in person.  Even better than on the swatch or even on the tester strip.  It is a fully saturated color (which is sometimes a little scary since most saturated colors feel dark) but it feels light and airy at the same time.  It's hard to explain, but I will hopefully get some better pictures once all of the furniture is set up and you will see the nice contrast between the white and the blue walls.  I cannot wait to bring our new little one home to see it (although I'm pretty sure he won't really be concerned with design at that point in his life....probably just eating and sleeping.....and ya know....pooping).  I still have a few DIY projects lined up (art work, a crib skirt and curtains), but I feel good knowing that we have this part of the project done.  YAY!  I can't wait to share it all with you!!! 

Next up I will show you the furniture that we had refinished and then give you a little update on the rug search (since we definitely aren't keeping the green one in there)......so I will be back later this week with an update on those projects.  Stay tuned...