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Monday, March 16, 2009

Dining Room Color Palette


I must be the most indecisive person for choosing wall paint. It has taken 12.5 yrs since we moved into this house, but we have finally covered the "Contractor White" paint on the d.r. walls. It has been slow going...

The downstairs of our house is basically 4 rooms and a 3/4 bath with laundry closet. Kitchen, dining room (which I think was intended to be a den), sitting room (which I think was supposed to be a dining area in a pseudo-open floor plan flowing from the kitchen), and a family room/living room/parlor. You'd think in 12.5 years, I could have developed a consistent naming scheme for our common living spaces. When we moved in all these walls were painted white... the kind that looks dingy even when they're clean, and then quickly become permanently not clean, not for lack of washing them, which tends to remove the paint if you are too vigorous..........

Eventually, I came home with a little wallpaper that had been marked down, and my long-suffering DH put it up on the little bit of wallspace that is officially kitchen. In a major fit of inspiration, I finally selected a murky and very sophisticated green (grayish) for the FR/LR/parlor, and DH and I got that done a couple of years ago (gorgeous, still love it), and that has been it for a while.

But now, things will be different around here because we are on a roll! The dining room has been painted taupe! Behr Paint Cheyenne Rock to be exact. Look it up, you'll love it. Here or here. (Did you see that? Another first for me: making a link from my text :-) ) [So now I've discovered these links look good, but don't work----I'm working on it....]

So let me tell you about my inspiration for this color.... I wanted the color of the trees on the horizon on a sunny winter day. The deciduous trees that is. I know on all the HGTV shows that there are some very sound color theory practices for filling in the rest of the palette, most of which revolve around the color wheel (get it?), but I just followed nature on this one......the other colors are winter white, unobtrusive evergreen, soothing sky blue, and very small flashes of a range of reds, from bittersweet berries (or holly) to a glimpse of cardinal on the wing. (Don't look away, watch for his lady, she won't be far behind). I can't wait to try and post some pics, but in the meantime refer back to the winter wreath, with the grapevine base (taupe), snowflakes (white), ribbon (sky), and bittersweet berry twigs. No evergreen exactly, but you'll see that the house exterior is painted kind of a spruce green. (That is a California Paints stain, BTW, selected by the previous owner, love it. Oft copied, but I've never seen it matched.)

Can't wait to upload actual dining room photos, need a weekend day off, so I can take pix when the sun is out. In the meantime, look at photos of sox I have made this winter, since it was taupe yarn (Vanna's Choice from Lion Brand) that made me realize I loved the color.

Okay this is funny. I just tried posting the yarn pic and it came out at the top of the blog. I'll leave it there since it introduces the color.............................

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