Preparing for Company

The guest room is still a work in progress.  Two weeks later, we are still quite pleased with the Hollingsworth Green color.  This weekend I dug around in the garage, found half a gallon of white semi-gloss paint the previous owners left behind, and repainted the baseboards.

Sadly, the Frog Tape did peel a couple of teensy patches of new paint off the wall, which was probably my fault for not taking it off carefully enough.  But I have plenty of green paint to fix it.  Still need to repaint the crown molding (ugh), as well as the molding around the door, closet door, and windows.

The other weekend project involved furniture painting - hurray!  My mother-in-law suggested that I pick a bedspread for the guest room before picking furniture paint colors.  A good idea, and I thought I had found the perfect bedspread online at Macy's:

But when I went to the store I discovered that the background is taupe, not white or pale grey, and I didn't think it would work with the guest room green.  It might work for our room once repainted blue, though!  My brilliant husband then suggested that I take a look at the pair of extra comforters we already had in the linen closet to see if either of them would work with the green, and lo and behold one does:

I bought this comforter ages ago and still like it.  Various shades of blue and gray with a little bit of pale purplish-pink.  Perhaps a little girly, but not super-feminine, and I figured if I stick to the blues and grays for furniture we can make it work.  Here is a shot of the paint color chart with the comforter.  As you can see, there are quite a few colors that would work.

So...I had a little bit of money left over this month to buy a 4 oz jar of Annie Sloan chalk paint and one of their special paintbrushes.   I spent ages in the store agonizing over colors and finally settled on a lovely color called French Linen; it's a medium grey with some brown in it.  My favorite work khakis are this color, come to think of it.  In the chart above, it is the second column from the left, in the middle.

And here is what I did with it!

Before and After

I am quite excited: I love this color!  It's soothing without being too muted, and it's actually almost the exact same color as the dark grey of the quilt.  The chalk paint was pretty easy to work with, though I have to say that my brush kept shedding bristles into the paint, so I'm going to take it back to the store and see if they will replace it.  Used the entire small jar of paint, but I did do two coats so that's decent coverage.  I painted the drawer as well, though I will paint the inside of the drawer a different color altogether.  Either Provence or Duck Egg Blue, I think...and whichever I choose I will also paint the small bureau that color next month.  Now to replace the drawer pull...