When they said 50 shades of grey, they sure weren’t kidding! I can’t believe I have gone 45 years and not had this happen yet, but I guess it was bound to at some point. Anyway, I had a paint disaster! Dis-as-ter. To the tune of $1000 (well subtract $300 because the bathroom looks okay), all because not once, but twice, I picked the wrong shade of grey. So I blogged earlier in the week about how we’re doing some work on our Vermont home, it’s already painted shades of green: sage and forest, and then the living room is pumpkin, I really didn’t want to sink a bunch of money into a second home, but the guest bedroom, hallway and bathroom hadn’t been painted in probably 20 years, and they just had to be done. So I figured well, grey goes with everything, it’s chic and neutral, so why not.
First let me just say I have had 2 homes already where I have picked a gray and it’s been perfect. So I felt fully confident in my abilities to choose a shade. So I trot down to Home Depot, grab a handful of swatches, and pop them up on the walls. After a week or so of super dark and dreary days, it was clear that the lighter the better, so I picked French Silver by Behr. Which, looked grey. But sadly, after a day’s work of painting had been done and the day wore on and the light changed, it was BLUE! Blue as a robin’s egg. Blue as a bluejay. Blue as the Danube. In short, it was blue. And trust me nothing looks worse with orange than blue, lol. So we were upset, but it wasn’t the end of the world (yet lol). We went back to Home Depot, got more swatches, talked to the guy there who told us that Graphite Gray was the grayest of all grays (and yes I know I should be listening to you lady design bloggers rather than just designing your sites ha ha), but I really am not that picky I just wanted a simple gray. And then, hark! I thought it was a message from above, but I went back through my files on our Ft. Lauderdale home, and located the light gray we had our walls there. “This will work” we thought. We already know what it looks like because we have it in South Florida.
Well folks, I think it’s evident that Vermont is not South Florida, but this paint looked NOTHING like it did in Ft. Lauderdale, when done, it looked like a baby blue. Correction: LOOKS like a baby blue, because at this point we are just ceasing and desisting. I have to stop, think about it and decide what to do before I pay for more labor and paint. I mean, I know we’re going to paint it again, but I’m totally at a loss as to what gray to choose. Hence my photos above, even in these there are literally hundreds of shades of grey. So if you have a suggestion by all means I would truly love to hear it! Signing off now – 50 shades!
