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Thursday, January 21, 2010

grey

last week i went to my mom's for a couple of days (that turned into a 6 day ordeal- think 'gilligan's island'). before leaving, john told me to choose the new paint color for the living room so he could do it while i was gone. i kept putting it off, because as i told him, "grey is grey- what's so hard about that?" aargh! that was the kiss of death. i ran in, chose a color, filled 3 gallons of very expensive no-VOC paint, and handed it off. and being the kind of man he is, he finished it. and had everything back the way we left it. upon walking in, i couldn't believe it. my grey living room and dining room were...blue. gulp. very diplomatically {{{wink}}} i told him that we were going to have to do it all over. that this was not grey. and he, being the kind of man he is, said 'ok'.
so we tried another color, this time in a sample size (yes, i learned my lesson), and it was- purple.

so here is what i've learned.
  • grey is not 'just grey'. sometimes it's blue, lavender, sage, or taupe.
  • always buy a sample first!
  • make your friends come over and look at it as you cry about how awful the color is
today i go back to get yet another sample can. this time with sage undertones. we'll see what happens.

any grey suggestions??? that actually look grey? i need actual sherwin william's numbers here, people!

9 comments:

Aleesa said...

If you haven't already, talk to Tim ( I think that is his name) at SW. He is awesome and helped us pick colors a couple of years ago. I was wanting a yellow color at the time and he did a great job steering me in the right direction and explaining the whole undertone color thing.

mandi said...

oh- good advice! thanks, aleesa!

Courtney said...

We painted our dinning room grey. I don't remember the brand we used but the name of the color is porpoise. We love it-even 4 years later and a friend of ours used the same color for their kitchen.
Good luck!

Mommy, M.D. said...

I got out my fan deck and the closest color to our walls is 7050 useful gray. good luck!

* * said...

oh gosh, i learned the same lesson you did a few years back... we chose gray for our bathroom, such a lovely soothing color and i am not any help because i can't remember the name! good luck xo

Tammie said...

pictures please (from Coby)

Nicola said...

oh, man. he loves you.
nicola
http://whichname.blogspot.com

cally said...

oh man. I've got nothing. good luck mandi.

Rosie_Kate said...

I will second that-- always buy sample cans.

Sorry I'm not help. I have a terrible time picking paint colors. But i often go through 5 samples before I settle on one.