First let me say that I’ll have more pictures coming of today’s subject. But this is all I have to share as of now. This photo also reveals one surprise…we took out a wall in between the living room and the first bedroom to create a dining room space. I love it. It opens up the living room so much. So you’ll note that my paint job has some touching up to do where the doorway was created. More pictures on the new dining room later. For now, let’s talk about the hallway. I have never been more anxious about a paint color in all my life. I knew that my mom’s red couch in the living room would be a nice pop of red in the middle of all that Bleeker Beige. But I wanted more.
While I’m not a huge fan of a ton of red, this isn’t my home and I do whatever the homeowner prefers. In this instance, I found a picture of a red wall in the Pottery Barn (where else?) that I adored. And that is where the fiasco began.
Normally Pottery Barn has paint swatches from Benjamin Moore paint that they produce for fall/winter and spring/summer. Well folks, I’m sad to report that the Pottery Barn and Benjamin Moore are ending their business relationship. Which I discovered when I tried to pick up paint swatches at the Pottery Barn the last time I was at the store. So while you can still see the paint colors in the magazine (on certain pages), you can no longer get a fan book of such colors. (And if I’m wrong about this, someone please let me know!)
In an attempt to find just the exact shade of red that was displayed in this beautiful page in the magazine, I called the Pottery Barn at least five times, getting a different answer just about every time. I called Benjamin Moore. And I called and stopped in at our local Benjamin Moore paint provider. Color matching ensued. Approximately 20 paint swatches later and I was still guessing. And if you’ve ever painted red, you know that red can be a hard color to get right!
So I made my best guess. And I didn’t have the couch to match anything against as it wasn’t even in the state yet. My first few rolls on the wall produced sweat-like panic. And the result, the most perfectly matched red. You couldn’t get a closer red to that couch if hauled in a cushion to the paint color matcher. I have no idea how I pulled it off. But I love the red hallway’s pop of color. It really ties the living room and the hallway together. And it draws your eye down the hall. (I’m a big, big fan of painting forgotten spaces like hallways and closets with some drama.) I didn’t paint the entire hallway red because it is very dark and I was nervous enough. So I’ll show you all with more pictures just exactly what got painted. If you’re painting any of the reds from the Pottery Barn colors…write me. Trust me, at this point, I’m your best expert. Oh, the red I ended up using-
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