Our Basement Renovation - Part Three -- Paint!

Now that we're on my third home renovation blog post we're entering into my favourite part.  Starting to make it all pretty.  Sure electrical and plumbing are nice and necessary yadda yadda yadda.  Walls are good and the drywall was kinda of exciting (as much as it can be called exciting) but when you start to pull out paint samples?  Ooooo baby.  That's when mama gets excited!

If you follow me on Pinterest you'll know that I pin a fair bit and you can tell when I'm interesting in something because I'll obsess about it whether it's fireplace stone veneers, shaker cabinets or the delight that are Ryan Reynold's abs.  *le sigh* ......  But I digress.  

One of my Pinterest boards is devoted to everything that inspires me for our basement renovation.  Pinterest is so addicting and such a time sucker and yet I can't help but keep coming back for more inspiration.  Brad and I obviously haven't used every idea I've pinned but it's nice to see some awesome things that others have done.  A little tip of the hat to their ability to make nice spaces.

Painting
Ok, this is much more in my wheelhouse!  I love seeing the drastic change when you begin painting!  But first we had to decide on paint colours.  

For the main colour I knew that I wanted it to be gray but there are about a bazillion different grays each with their own subtle hues.  When you start putting them beside each other it gets a little ca-razy.  We started getting overloaded with inspiration so we went to our local Sherwin Williams dealer for some help.  Normally we're strictly Benjamin Moore people but SW had a sale and my sister (who is equally picky) had loved their paint.  It's pricey with a capital P but we waited for their 40% off sale.  This is not our first rodeo.

We ended up with two gray colours that we liked.  One was a very 'elephant' gray colour   -- Argos (SW 7065) -- and the other, Mindful Gray (SW 7016), had more of a beige hue (or 'greige').  We ended up buying a tester can of each colour and a small sheet of underlayment (thin board) - about 2'x4'.  We painted half of the board with a sample of each gray knowing that we'd probably go for the Argos.  But when we brought the board into the basement and saw how it looked down there with the lighting we surprised ourselves by going for the greigey Mindful Gray.

Tip: Paint up a sample board.  It may cost you a bit of money but it'll pay off in the long run.

We decided on the rest of the colours fairly quickly and we love how they all go well with each other.

Poolhouse (SW 7603) is the colour Brad chose for the den.  At first, I admit, that I was afraid it would look too 'under the sea' and dark but it looks amazing and I love the colour it adds to a fairly gray basement.

Grizzle Gray (SW 7068) we're using on an accent wall (which will be in a future DIY post -- so excited!!!), and on the wall behind the TV.  It's a nice, fairly dark gray.

Watery (SW 6478) is the colour I chose for the powder room.  It was a beautiful soft blue on the paint chip and in the can.  But when I start to paint the walls it took on a slightly bright and greenish 'oh-em-gee what was I thinking!!' tinge and I started to worry I had chosen wrong, wrong, WRONG! I had a 'Sweet Mary Tyler Moore what have I done?!' moment.  But once the white vanity, light counter top and toilet went in the colour miraculously toned down and so did my anxiety.  S'all good now.  Crisis averted with a toilet.  Who knew?

The last colour, Cityscape (SW 7067) is the colour we chose for our custom wet bar cabinetry.  It's a nice medium gray that's in between the main colour, Mindful Gray, and the dark Grizzle Gray.  We love it!

Painting - The Process Brad and I are weird because we actually like to paint.  A lot of this enjoyment of painting stems from the fact that we make a good painting team. We have good painting mojo, if you will.  You can't buy that at the Home Depot (at least I don't think you can).  Typically I do all the cutting with an edged brush and he is the Wonder with the Roller.  In this case it was such a big job that we each did both jobs.  


We took a week off work to get all the painting done.  At first I thought that a week was overkill but as you'll quickly learn (and Brad has known for almost 19 years) I am the poster child for poor time estimation.  Once we got started I quickly figured out that a week would be a good amount of time.  It took us five days of painting to get one coat of primer and two coats of paint on all of the walls.   This is a big space! With some good music and conversation it was actually a fun time.

I think that part of what Brad enjoys about home renovation with me is that I'm some serious renovation eye candy.  I'm not gonna lie, I'd totally bring all the boys to the yard if they were to see me in my old capris, old MS Run T-shirt and green striped fluffy socks!! Back off boys!  I'm all Brad's. Lucky, lucky lad.

I'd like to say that I like to have a more organic look when I pick my painting attire and that I prefer to focus on creating beautifully painted walls ... but I'd be lying.  When I'm in the painting zone all sense of fashion (obviously) goes out the window.  I'm in it to be comfy and not worry about wrecking good clothes - and I'm obviously not thinking about being in future blog posts.  Hence the old capris, ponytail and fluffy green socks.

Final coat is done! The fluffy socks worked 
their magic because we love it!

The den looks amazing with that punch of blue

Here's a picture of the two-piece bathroom. 
Now do you see why I was getting nervous about the colour?

It was hard to get a good picture of the powder room's real wall colour due to lighting and the size of the room.  But here's a picture of the cabinetry paint colour (we're going for a shaker-style cabinet instead of what's pictured), our Formica counter top pick and the paint stick with the SW Watery to give you an idea of where we're going with the powder room.

So that's where we stood at the beginning of October 2015.  The painting is done!

Next up?

Picking furniture and flooring -- To Carpet or not to carpet?  That is the question!

Choosing custom cabinetry and finishes - 'Um, I think you mistakenly added a few zeros at the end of that quote, madame!'

Previous Basement Reno Posts: 
1. In the Beginning (planning things out and moving plumbing)
2. Insulatin', Lighting and Drywall ... Oh my!