The Breakfast Nook: One Room Challenge Week 3

If the six weeks of the One Room Challenge was a complete lifetime, birth to death, week three would be the angsty teen years. This week, I questioned everything about our project. Is it too much for six weeks? Will I finish? When will I find the right color of paint? Everyone is looking at me, and I am not holding a pumpkin spice anything! I am a terrible blogger. Without pumpkins, this blog is nothing. I should just quit. Oh! The drama.

To top off the whole insecurity spiral, I fell while running, and I have a badly sprained finger on my left (dominant) hand. Fortunately, X-rays showed no broken bones. However, it is harder to function with my fingers taped together. I have been taking the tape off every day to paint or type, and I put it back on when it just hurts too much. Regardless, I shall prevail, and quit complaining.

This week’s post was supposed to be a window update, but I have pushed that to next week. I was unable to work with glass or power tools safely with my compromised left hand. Instead, I will talk about paint.

Light or Dark?

I am quite sure that I beat that question within an inch of its life. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to paint the ceiling haint blue to keep loosely with tradition. A couple of months ago, when I was planning this project, I bought a quart of the color Cay by Sherwin-Williams. I have been planning this entire project around that color. It was the only sure thing.

This week, I spent days considering dark walls with dark trim, light walls with light trim, dark walls with light trim, light walls with dark trim. Ahhhhhh! Since this is not my typical method of operation, I blame the injury; it was frustrating and annoying. I gave myself a stern talking to as I was eating my third spoonful of peanut butter. (When I am anxious, I stress-eat peanut butter.) Then, I marched right down to the closest paint store, and I made up my mind.

I chose Sherwin-Williams’ Mount Etna for the walls and trim. Decision made.

While I was there, I decided that the color for the ceiling, no longer worked with Mount Etna, so I picked up a quart of Tidewater, also by Sherwin-Williams. (Yeah, so much for Cay being the only sure thing.)

Everything was coming together. When I got home, I immediately got to work. I painted the ceiling in about forty-five minutes. It looked terrific.

Then, I got to work on the walls. I decided just to do a small portion to see how I liked it. Mount Etna is a beautiful color, but…I did not like it at all. Sigh.

What I love the most about the breakfast nook is that it feels almost like being in a tree house. When we are sitting in this room, it is a beautiful peek into nature.

I realized that by painting it a very dark color, the breakfast nook would feel more like a cave, and that was inconsistent with my vision.

So, rather than reinvent the wheel yet again, I decided to consider paint colors that I have already used and love. By limiting my choices, settling on Agreeable Gray was easy.

To refresh your memory, we used Agreeable Gray in the dining room last fall when we participated in the One Room Challenge.

Combined with our go-to Citilite for the trim, it will be the perfect bright neutral palette for the breakfast nook. It will go well with our new kitchen, a blue ceiling, the stenciled floor, and the dandelion paper by Cavallini & Co. With this decision made, I am moving out of the teen years and straight into adulthood.

Thank you for bearing with me this week. Next week’s post will have more action and less drama. I promise.

When you get a chance, head on over to Calling It Home to see all the progress from the Featured Designers and the Guest Participants too. Some of them are sitting at the angsty teen lunch table with me. Life is a struggle, and everyone is staring at our acne. Others seem to be moving through this challenge with popularity and ease. Life clears the way for them. Yes, we hate those people and their buttery smooth complexions so much. Ha!

Start from the beginning:
Week 1 – The Breakfast Nook
Week 2 – The Breakfast Nook