Best Mistake EVER!!!!!!

When we bought our house the previous owners did a great job painting every room beautiful shades of neutral colors. As you all figured out from my red kitchen makeover I don't do neutral I do BOLD! Since the day our entire house arrived from it's 2 month long trip across the ocean I have been trying desperately to figure out what to do with our living room. It is of course the largest room in the house  and thanks to our nice pretty open floor plan the living room flows right into the dining room/kitchen. I love the layout but when trying to find paint colors that can make a statement in the living room with a bright red dining room in the background it can be a little tricky. Another hard part was convincing myself that it was ok to paint even though all of our stuff worked quite well with the, we'll call the color dark beige, that was already on the walls. The last hurdle we had to figure out was the base boards, what we would do with those and what would look best with them. See another one of those little touches the owners had put on the house was they took out all the normal base boards and replaced them with 1x3 pine wood plain unsealed boards. They also did these boards around all the doors too. They are not one of my favorite features of the house and our plan was to rip them out as soon as we moved in but buying all the new molding is going to be very costly. We then planned on just staining them so we could darken them up and at least then they would be sealed but once again picking a color to do since it's through the entire house has been very difficult. Here's part of the living room before paint. All the furniture is dark cherry/brown, the couch is dark brown and the walls are a shade of brown.

I put weeks of thought into what paint color I wanted to do for the living room, so much thought that I lost TONS of sleep at night because all I could think about was paint colors. Every house we have ever done any painting in I always painted at least one wall in the living room a sage mossy green color and the complimenting walls have been medium tan. My decor with this has been browns, blacks, coppery oranges and red, lots of red ;) Shoot even when my husband and I had our wedding ( a few years after we actually got married) these were the colors we had for everything.
Here's a pic from one of our apts in Germany, please excuse the decorations and food since it's a pic from my son's birthday.

That's the green I have used in three different houses so I wanted to change things up this time even though I still have most of the same decor then as I do now. Sooooo now getting on to the fun part of this post.....I had a vision! When I have these visions my husband gets a little scared because I don't stop until I get that vision made a reality. In the case of this vision everyone thought I was crazy and that the color I wanted would look terrible. I second guessed myself a lot thanks to all the opinions from everyone but decided the color I wanted to do was BLUE! I never in a million years thought about painting any room in my house blue but my gut said it was the way to go. I ran to Sherwin Williams and started buying up some samples.

At first I was having trouble with the idea of not using green so I got one green sample and one blue. I HATED them both though and knew I was just fine NOT having green walls in this house.

The blue I picked was to cornflower so I grab a ton of swatches trying to decide if I should go silvery blue or a form of more teal blue. After tons of starring and debating I headed back to Sherwin Williams for some better options. Here is where this story becomes the best mistake ever!!!!! I went to Sherwin Williams and they are FANTASTIC in there, I spent about 45 mins with a wonderful guy who helped me stare down and compare every shade of blue they had against a dark brown swatch (for the couch color) and the swatch of red I had from my kitchen. I finally choose two blues and one other accent color that I wanted to try and use on a side table that needs redoing. He starting mixing up my order for the three colors and when the first color was done mixing he realized that he had accidentally put the tinting amount for a gallon instead of a quart so the color was much darker and WAY different that the original color I had picked out. He went ahead and put that one aside and made me up another one with proper measurements this time. I paid for my 3 samples and then he carried them out to my car for me, he also had gone ahead and given me that messed up quart at no charge because they were just going to throw it away and said "hey you never know you may for the perfect use for it one day". I thanked him so much for being awesome and headed home.

I was trying to cover up that hideous green so when I painted on my new samples I used all three blues making sure to put that darker color mess up in the middle so the other two blues would pop. After about 15 mins of non stop staring the light bulb went off in my head and I ran back out the door. That color the guy had accidentally made was PERFECT!!!! I ran back into the store and asked him to accidentally make that again but in a gallon this time. He ended up just making a swatch from my sample and having the computer generate a formula for it. The color was actually supposed to be the first one in the row which is Moody Blue but since he made is gallon sized in a quart it ended up being Moody Blue x 500% which is a whole different color.

Here it is in all it's glory!!! I am soooo in love with this color and I think I looks gorgeous with the red in the back ground. This is by far the best mistake I have ever encountered.

My breakfast nook/Coffee bar area

 The whole living rooms with my lazy pups. Oh and remember that fourth sample I got with intentions on using on a end table redo....well it made it's way onto the wall too. I didn't think hubby would dig it but he loves it too :)

I still get up every morning amazed by this color! I think the house is coming along beautifully and it is definitely OURS now and no longer THEIRS which makes me proud and super happy.

 

Thanks to the paint sale at Sherwin Williams this dramatic change only cost $65 and that includes lots of sample quarts of paint along with the gallon I bought to complete the project.

 

I am in no way endorsed by Sherwin Williams, they are just plain awesome.