Inspired by Domino

I figured when I told Trey I wanted to paint our living room Robin's Egg Blue he would fight me on it.  Let me back up a little.  When we entered into contract on our house, I had a mild freak out.  I am not a very creative person and I am definitely not good at decorating from scratch.  However, I am good at learning, so I set about to try and learn how to decorate or at least copy people who did know how!

At Books-A-Million, I found this wonderful book.

I had never heard of Domino before but I believe there is also a magazine.  Since I purchased this book, I have seen their name dropped in various other DIY and home decor blogs.  Anyway, this book is full of beautiful pictures of perfectly designed rooms including this one,

I ADORED the colors used in this room and really loved the muted Robin's Egg Blue walls in such a traditional setting.  I thought, I love blue, maybe I can pull this off.  I didn't want to try to pull off the green and yellow furniture though.  I thought the whole picture was beautiful, but not really practical for someone who can't afford to change out furniture any time trends change.  For that reason, Trey and I decided to go with very neutral furniture (linen and chocolate colors for every piece in the living room) and bring in the greens and yellows in other accessories in the room.

First, I made a trip to Home Depot (which is becoming one of my favorite places) to try and find the perfect blue.  I settled on these two - Opal Silk on the left and Harmonious on the right, both Behr Ultra Premium Paint & Primer.

There is only a slight difference between the two so we had to take it to the walls to decide.  In the mean time, I found the perfect rug on HomeDepot.com.

This is just a small shot of the 7' X 9' rug but it had most everything I was looking for - neutral base color, just enough blue to make it work with the walls, but enough green to instill green as one of the primary colors for the room.  It also has a darker neutral color that is just enough yellow to make other yellow accents look like they belong.

Now we had to decide which color looked best with the rug.  After painting a patch of the wall the day after we closed, and looking at the wall in both artificial light and the light of day, we went with Opal Silk.  After applying two coats and cutting in all the trim, we were very pleased with the results!  The blue really makes all the trim and molding pop! (Please ignore the quality of this picture; it was taken on my cell phone)

As far as the paint and painting tools we used, we were very pleased with the Behr Paint & Primer in one.  It was a little more expensive than the other brands, but the paint was so thick and smooth we will definitely use it again.  We rolled everything except the areas around any trim or molding.  We started out taping the trim with painters tape until we realized that the previous owners had painted the trim with latex paint...over oil paint.  Needless to say, when we started pulling up the first piece of tape, a lot of the paint on the trim came up with it.  After that, I looked to DIY bloggers Sherry and John at Young House Love for the answer.  If you have never read their blog before, you HAVE to start!  Anyway, they suggested using the Premium XL Tight Spots 2" Angle Short Handle Brush in their blog, "How To Paint Trim Like A Pro."  They got their brush at Sherwin-Williams, but we had Home Depot giftcards so I got the closest thing I could find - a SHUR-LINE 2" Trim Brush.  This brush was a few dollars more, but it has a teflon surface protector that makes it paint really smoothly and also makes it easier to clean up.

So that's how my living room ended up blue.  My paternal grandmother would be so proud!