Rhapsody in Blue

Repainting the house has been a rather slow process; we've been here over a year and have painted less than half of the house. Part of this has been financial as I did not care to buy cheap, low-quality paint. Part of it has been difficulty in choosing colors. I already am leaning towards repainting the guest room and guest bathroom because I don't like the Hollingsworth Green much after all. So I've been a bit tentative in choosing colors. However, the kitchen walls were getting gross because we don't have a backsplash, so that became a priority, and I wanted to paint the walls before we picked a backsplash, as noted in the last post. So I bought several sample cans and put a number of swatches up on the walls. The one Nick liked best was Farrow & Ball's Parma Gray. I was leaning towards a 50/50 mix of the Parma Gray with F&B's Borrowed Light.

 

Parma Gray on the left, Borrowed Light on the right.

Benjamin Moore might have been able to match that combination, but I had my doubts, and Nick thought the deeper color would work well in the kitchen since it's a well-lit room. In poking around online, I found that most folks feel that BM can't match the depth of F&B paint even if they do match the color closely, and that you do actually get your money's worth with F&B. Plus, our kitchen doesn't actually have that much wall space so I knew we could get another room out of the gallon of paint. So I bought the bullet gallon!

The paint is made in England, and our darling little local paint shop didn't have the color and finish (Modern Emulsion) I wanted in stock. So I ordered it Monday, it arrived Thursday, and I picked it up Friday morning. Hadn't originally planned to paint this weekend, but once I had the actually paint I was rather excited about the idea. Spent the first half of Saturday cleaning off the counter tops, washing the walls, and taping off trim and cabinets. By the time that was finished, it was nearly 6 pm which was a bit late to start painting, but I'd already planned on it being a late night. The first coat took a bit over an hour, and then I waited about 3 hours to recoat (should have waited four according to the can but I was impatient).

The results? It's far less gray and much more blue than I had anticipated, but I think that's on me, not the paint. It got darker and bluer as it dried, which was interesting to watch. Yes, I watched paint dry. Nick said it looks almost exactly like he thought it would, and he loves it! I like it - am working on love but still getting used to how very blue it is. I had a friend growing up whose mother had a kitchen in a similar color and she filled it with tacky goose figurines, so I have a bit of an odd association with the color. Need to work on getting past it and trusting Nick's judgement. Plus, it's not done yet; needs a faux roman blind over the window, a new light fixture over the sink, and a backsplash. Then it'll be done. I liked working with the paint very much, though.  It splatters less than the BM Regal, and the odor was quite mild. Used maybe 1/3 of the gallon to put up two coats. Don't know that I would say it's a better paint with regards to depth of color, but I'm quite sure I'm not qualified to judge that.

But enough rambling. See for yourself!

The original kitchen (photos taken right before and shortly after we moved in:

The newly repainted kitchen:

It is very, very blue, but I think we can make it work! Leaning towards a dark grey or brown mosaic backsplash - we'll see.

Where was Nick during all this, you ask? Hard at work in the garage on another soon-to-be-finished project that I will post soon!