Freshly painted walls are finally here!

I won't do a lot of waxing poetic about the painting project. Let's just flash quickly to a picture of what it used to look like:

As you can see, the real brick has a more neutral and uniform look, whereas that fake brick is an awful, bright red with all sorts of different shades and colors. A bit of salmon thrown in and some dark brown for good measure. Yuck. It was gross enough as it was, but paired with the other brick, it was all just a mess.

So I started priming and getting it ready. I had a tinted primer made so that it would cover the red better. Here are the walls with a strictly grey primer:

That is the only good picture I have. Those giant windows create a lot of problems when it comes to taking pictures in this room, and since I don't believe in using the flash . . .

Anyway. It's already 100% better. Then the paint started going on:

The paint looked a bit like a drab, clay/mud color against that grey, but I persevered. The swatch was so pretty, and I was sure it had been what I wanted.

The main snag came when peeling off the painter's tape. Needless to say, the brick provided a very uneven and difficult surface to work around, which made taping difficult. This is what I saw as I peeled away the tape:

Gah! Let's just say that an extra hour around the room with some bright white paint was needed even though Levi said he wanted to replace the trim anyway. I wasn't about to just leave that mess. No sir. I do not need my world in chaos, thank you very much.

I was rewarded in the end:

It's a great neutral color, and it will go so well with the feeling we're hoping to achieve in the future.

Here it is with all of our things back in the room:

It's got a little bit of a weird greenish, mud tinge in the wide picture, but that's simply because of the weird light. Also, it's because none of our furniture is the correct color at the moment. It's all too brownish yellow and red. We're wanting cooler colors in our living room, like this simple and neutral Henry Sofa from West Elm.

That's the look we're headed for someday. Nothing too plushy, but nothing too harsh and modern. 

Here are some side-by-side comparisons of the room before and after the painting. 

I love it! We love it. Levi was on the fence for awhile, but he's officially happy with it. It's harder for him to visualize these sort of things, so he just decided to trust me. We're both very glad he did.

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I'm officially done with projects until the New Year hits. Phew!

Keep it real, 

MB