Brand New Coat

Unlike me, my living room walls are sporting a brand new coat this autumn.

We finally committed to a paint shade – Glidden’s Water Chestnut, a soft cream-beige I discovered on Young House Love – and broke out the brushes a few weekends ago.

Every time I paint, I go through the same roller coaster of emotions and this time was no different. First, there’s utter confusion about choosing a color, then elation upon making a choice and realizing we’re finally moving forward. Next, brief panic after seeing the paint first hit the walls (you know how paint always appears lighter when wet? Well, when wet, our new color matched our old paint color exactly), and major relief upon realizing the end result is better, not worse.

Before

After

And finally, a bit of disappointment after moving the furniture back in place and realizing that the room still looks pretty similar.

All of a sudden, I worried that things looked too dark, that there were too many competing dark colors – blues, reds, greens, browns. This sparked a mad urge to tear out our old roller shades, swap the chunky coffee table out for something smaller and cozier, get a lighter rug and furniture and buy a big ol’ mirror for over the fireplace in hopes of giving the illusion of a more spacious room.

Fortunately, my boyfriend was able to talk me out of doing anything drastic. We decided to focus our energy on improving the lighting situation and adding details like crown molding, and then assess what our next move should be. That’s fine by me – I’ve been itching to tear out that god-awful cheapo fan (our only source of living room light) since the moment we toured our house.

Lighting has always been too spare in here, so we’re going to try a semi-flush mount pendant with two bulbs to hopefully reflect light up and out.  Something like this lamp from Feiss.

Though if our ceiling (and budget) wasn’t so low, it might be fun to get a little crazy and try a vintage style chandelier, or one of the new sophisticated drum lights like this guy.

As for illuminating those dark corners, we briefly considered sconces on either side of the mantel, but decided against tearing into those walls. Now our options seem to be recessed lights in four corners of the room, or possibly just one or two new standing lamps. I’m crossing my fingers that we don’t have to go with the canned…