{Craft Room Redo: The Perfect Gray}

When I decided to makeover my craft room, I knew that I wanted to paint the walls.  I wanted something really peaceful.  And I wanted a neutral so that if I ever decided to change the color scheme of the room, I could simply change accessories to have a totally different look.  So I first had to clean all the junk out of the room.  (You can see the craft room before and read all about the mess here.)  I was surprised how big the room seemed when it was perfectly free of clutter and furniture.

 

Well, I shouldn't say perfectly clean because there was still clutter in the closet.  And I had to have a radio to help me make it through the make over process.  But it was clean enough that every noise made in there echoed.  This is probably weird, but I love walking in an empty room with wood floors and hearing the echo of my footsteps in the room.  That echo to me is the sound of possibility--the room can become anything I want it to be.  But I'm digressing with my weird English teacher analyzation, so let's continue with the painting.

When the room was free of clutter, I had a blank slate to work with.  I knew that choosing the right gray for my walls could be tricky.  I didn't want a dark gray, and I didn't want a gray that had a lot of blue in it.  Luckily, the House of Smiths recently did a post about choosing a gray for their home office.  They chose a really pretty gray made my Sherwin Williams.  For time and travel's sake, I knew that I would be buying my paint at Walmart, and Walmart doesn't carry Sherwin Williams.  But they carry Glidden, and that was a darker gray paint the Smiths used for another project.  So I used their tip for choosing paint.   I chose the paint chip called Wood Smoke that they used.  Then I randomly pulled gray chips from the display at Walmart until I found a lighter version of the color that I thought would be perfect.  The color I actually chose was from a Color Place chip, but the paint guy matched the color in Glidden paint.  The color is called Pebble Cinder Gray.

I also picked up some ceiling paint while in the store.  I HATE painting ceilings, but if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right.  My walls and ceilings are plaster, and a crack was starting in the craft room ceiling.  I knew I needed to patch the crack as best as I could and repaint the ceiling.

I returned home with my two gallons of paint in hand and started painting.  I must tell you that writing this it seems so simple and like everything went off without a hitch.  This is not exactly how it happened.  I was painting this room pretty much the day before leaving for a four day vacation.  Every piece of junk that was in the craft room was scattered throughout every room of my house.   When I left for my trip, the room was painted, but all the junk was still EVERYWHERE.  And I wanted to have the room done the day after we returned home for our trip so that I could enter it into the Creative Bloggers Got Talent competition.  And there was a man coming to give us an estimate on our house that same week.  So needless to say, this was a VERY stressful "painting time," though it normally wouldn't have been.  Even though all that other stuff was going on, the room color turned out perfectly.

This is a photo taken at night before I started putting furniture back in the room.  (I would post a photo of the room during the day, but that would give too much of the BIG REVEAL away.)  The gray gives the walls character that they didn't have when they were cream.  And even though this would probably be considered a cool color, it still is really cozy.  I absolutely love it!  And I can't wait to show you what the room looks like when it's completely finished!