Well, we lived with the blue for a little over a month, but I'm sad to say it just wasn't working! I love blue (clearly it is my favorite color), I loved the color we finally settled on (Benjamin Moore's Polo Blue), I really did LIKE the room, but it just wasn't feeling 100% right. My husband thought that it was too dark.. That wasn't my problem so much as it just made the first floor feel a little disjointed and choppy. I really love open floor plans, and while I'll never have that in this house, I do like the rooms to flow and feel connected, and that just wasn't happening. The blue was too stark of a contrast against the grays of the rest of the first floor.
I tried to love it, I really did! Part of me will even miss it. BUT, I'm excited about our plan to redo this room (again!) That being said, our goals for the room were to make it light and bright, and to ensure it flows really well with the other rooms on the first floor.
At first I wanted to shiplap the dining room and paint it all white, but quite frankly that sounded like a LOT of work and I'm not sure shiplap really goes with the colonial style of our house all that well. That being said, we did still really like the idea of paneling and lots of white. So, first thing we did was paint the top half of the room white (the bottom half has wainscoting that was already white). It took two coats of primer and two coats of paint (Thank you Evan!) The impact was like a huge sigh of relief, it just felt so much better right off the bat!
The plan going forward is as follows:
1) Add trim detail on the top half of the room to mimic the wainscoting on the bottom half of the room.
2) Add a rug for some dimension/color.
3) Build a new cabinet/buffet system and paint it gray for a little more color in the room (We will use the white leaning ladder shelves in another room!)
4) Add artwork above the previously mentioned cabinet
It will definitely take some time to get it 100%, but hopefully it will be done mid-summer! I'm excited about the change :) The change of how it "feels" is hard to even depict in photos.
OH, and I have plans to use the blue in 2-other projects :) STAY TUNED!
