Happily Going Grey

Somewhere along the way we developed a love for grey. Maybe we was inspired by our fluffy ragdoll of a cat, Gusburger:

All I know is before I realized it we had a grey couch, grey duvet cover, grey china, grey towels, and even a grey living room/dining room. That isn’t even counting the grey rattan placemats, pewter napkins, and graphite placemats we are registered for 😀 Perhaps it is the only color John and I can agree on. Regardless, I like that it is gender neutral and looks great with a variety of accent colors.

Early on John and I agreed to go grey in the living room. Because our living room morphs into the dining room and also leads down the hallway to all the bedrooms, it meant we had a lot of ground to cover. We wanted the rooms to flow together, so we decided not to chop up the connected spaces with different colors. We grabbed a handful of grey swatches at Home Depot as well as our local paint store that carries Benjamin Moore. We decided to go with Benjamin Moore because we liked the color options and had heard that higher quality paints can give better coverage and hold up longer.

We picked up two test pots in Moonshine and Silvery Moon. We painted test splotches in several different areas of both rooms.

Moonshine is on the green spectrum, while Silvery Moon is has hints of blue. I was fully expecting to pick Silvery Moon because I’m generally not a big fan of green but we both agreed Moonshine was the winner. We lived with the test splotches on the walls for several weeks before taking action. They even made it into some of our holiday pictures:

Eventually we took the plunge and bought a full gallon. We ended up painting over the course of several non-consecutive days. I did most of the cutting in by hand and John rolled when he was in town. He mysteriously seems to go out of town on business whenever I get the paint rollers out. Maybe I’m more ambitious when he is traveling.

It took us 3 separate days to paint the living room, 2 days to do our little hallway area, and we did the entire dining room the same day we finished in the hallway space. I had left work early that day due to heavy snows and I figured if I was using up my precious PTO then I would be productive! This is somehow our only progress picture from all of our painting days:

In pictures the difference is subtle but it makes a big impact in person. Here are our slightly less barren walls: