Comfort Gray Kitchen

The painting is done! I’m exhausted. I think over this past week I have painted over 1000 linear feet of trim and I don’t even know how many square feet of wall and ceilings. Put it this way… A LOT! We said buh-bye to the overload of gold tones and said a happy hello to a brighter, yet calmer, Comfort Gray Kitchen.

If you remember, last week I posted how I was drowning and gold and wanted to change from Blonde to Comfort Gray. Comfort Gray is by Sherwin Williams and it is actually quite blue. We were able to paint the entire kitchen and dining area with one gallon of SW’s Harmony paint in eggshell. The Harmony is my go-to paint for walls. It’s low VOC and has excellent coverage. Our local SW paint store had it’s 25 anniversary sale last week so I was able to purchase all my paint for 40% off!

This is the north side of the house and you would think that the golden blonde walls would brighten the rooms, but strangely they didn’t. It’s amazing how light and bright the kitchen is now. All the antique white trim work received a brighter white coat of semi-gloss paint in SW Extra White. The white trim really helped to accentuate the gray, not to mention hide all the old wear and tear. The maple cabinets are still more orange than I’d like, but we’ll have to live with them for now. I have to be content with some things, right?

I can easily spruce up a staircase though! Years of greasy, grimy kid fingerprints instantly vanished with a fresh coat of paint. I think I heard my staircase thank me even. It needed something besides fresh paint. It needed artwork to help balance out the black of the Framed Chalk Board Wall and Thrift Store Storage Table.

I had three black and white prints I ordered from The Lettered Cottage a few years ago that I weren’t being displayed. I used my favorite tricks on How to Make a Gallery Wall to easily hang the pictures.

The black frames and prints help add interest and lead the eye up the staircase. My boys love getting into the action whenever mom has her camera out. They were actually behaving thank goodness. Normally they are gleefully jumping in front of the camera, trying to mess up my shot. Boys…gotta-love-em!

The main goal of repainting was to try to meld the gold and crimson color scheme downstairs with the sandy and watery tones upstairs. After painting the kitchen I realized the Blonde walls look too vibrant now against the cooler Comfort Gray. The plans are too take that far back room, which we use as our computer room, and paint the lower 3/4 of the walls white with board and add board and batten. And I think the kitchen table needs to either be stained ebony or painted black. It is 20 years old and is in need of refinishing anyhow.

Finally that brings us to the view from the family room. I’m standing on the fireplace hearth for this shot. The gold is just too much don’t you think? It needs to be toned way down and maybe a more neutral color is in order now. (Sigh) I was really hoping everything would blend perfectly but it doesn’t.

This is when I feel like the little girl in the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”. It never ends does it? It’s like a domino effect. One change leads to another change, which leads to another, and before you know it my project list has multiplied ten fold. Too bad the piggy bank doesn’t multiply as well! So I’ll live with the gold for awhile longer and when I make changes I’ll be sure to bring you along this red, gold, and blue-gray journey.

Kim

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