Paint, Paint, and More Paint

Eight coats of paint in eight days.  In only two rooms.  I don't ever want to relive it.

When we decided to flip flop the office and dining room to better suit our needs, I knew that I also wanted to change the wall colors in these two rooms (much to Seth's dismay).  You may remember that I was leaning towards white walls a few weeks ago.  Well, I decided that I also wanted a light blue ceiling.  

So, Seth and I took a bunch of our light blue paint samples and dumped them into a paint can with some leftover white paint.  I felt so resourceful.  We made the icy, light, grayish blue that you see in the roller tray above.

But then we started rolling it onto the ceiling and it looked completely different.

What the heck?  Painting this room baffles me.  Then we thought, 'Maybe the blue walls are reflecting off the ceiling and causing it to appear more saturated than it really is.'  So we used a piece of white poster board to cover part of the wall.  But it was really hard to tell if it made a difference.  So, we decided to stop painting the ceiling and tackle the walls first.

Now, I really loved the Wedgewood Gray.  But the white walls really brighten the room (I think that's two coats in above).  It was kinda shocking to me how much brighter it got.  We used Valspar's Ultra White (formerly Anthem White) which is the same color as our bedroom.  

It took one coat of high hiding primer and THREE coats of Ultra White.  I had hoped that the "high hiding primer" would help us cut down on the number of coats needed but I guess not. Lesson learned: white paint does not cover well.  That's probably obvious to most of you, but it wasn't to me.

Now back to the ceiling.  Amazingly, I picked up some paint swatches from Lowe's and immediately loved Valspar's Stillness.  

It ties into the artwork in the entryway and the print that I ordered for above my desk.  And it is such a soft, soothing color.

The ceiling took the normal two coats.  For those keeping track, we're up to six coats.  The other two were for the dining room walls.  I'm going to leave you hanging and reveal the new color in my next post.

The positive news - I'm now a pro at cutting in.