Family Room Re-do

You may remember, our little living room on the first floor looks like this.  Last year, we got a cute microfiber couch and two red leather chairs from Raymour and Flanigan on major sale.  This is a high-traffic kitty area since it is the warmest room in the winter, and it leads to the litterboxes in the laundry room, so we needed furniture that could withstand a tornado.

Yes, our cats are bad.  Yes, that is why the blog is called what it is called.  All home improvements and big (and little) purchases have to be considered with the four feline family members in mind.

Randy and I wanted to paint the room a fun color, but keep it cool and relaxing.  I wanted to make it a yoga studio.  Randy wanted to make it a man cave.  We agreed on blue, and had painted swatches of several Benjamin Moore colors on the wall.  A year later, they were still there.

Everyone who came over would stop and look at the colors, pick one, and then ask which one we liked.  We had two favorites, and we were leaning towards the second one from the left....  but we never pulled the trigger.

It was starting to get embarrassing, so we decided to do something about it.  Something that wouldn't compete with the red accents in the room.

Something nice and soothing, that would maybe tie in this painting and everything else in the room.  A tall order, I know.

So we painted it gray.  Surprised?  So were we.

We only painted the top parts of the walls because we planned to do something fun underneath.

We picked up a can of Behr Paint and Primer in One from the Home Depot's "oops" paint cart for $6.  Can't beat that with a paint stick.   It looked like a nice purple-ly light blue color at the store, but when we put it up on the walls, it was gray.  A nice happy gray though, like the darker part of white, fluffy clouds right before a summer thunderstorm.  I liked it, Randy liked it.  Six bucks.  Score!

We came down later that night to check on it, see how it was drying, and make sure we still liked the color.  We found this little man in the window...  and little gray paw prints all over the floor.  Luckily they were pretty well-covered with drop cloths, and the few footprints on the hard wood came up easily with water on a rag.  Phew!  Another Keller-induced heart attack averted.  Unfortunately, he was not happy when I wiped the paint off his tiny feet.

Here it is, all dry, after two coats.  Yep, you can still see the blue paint swatches, but don't worry, we have plans for them!

So what do you think?  Anyone else with paint color paralysis?  Sometimes I think you just need to buy some oops paint and throw it up on the wall and see how you like it.  That seems to be how I make decisions like that.  Agonize, agonize, agonize, then just pick up a gallon of paint on a whim.  Probably how my bathroom turned out red.  Ugh, that's next on the agenda!