The sharper eyed among you might have noticed in Wednesday’s pinwheel post that the yellow is finally gone in the sun room! But you can’t really tell what color it is in that picture, because it’s so, so light. It’s the lightest I’ve ever painted a room, ever. Some people are afraid of color; I’m afraid of white walls. And these walls aren’t white! But they’re closer than I’ve ever come before.

Dave was startled when I pointed to the color on the card. “THIS one?! Are you sure? It’s almost white.” But, I mean, it’s a sunroom, right? I wanted something cool and light and airy, with the idea that most of the color in the room would come from accessories and whatnot (eventually. We have very few of said accessories and whatnot at the moment).

We started out, as you’ll recall, here:

This is before we bought the house. Same yellow paint as everywhere else in the house and a giant leak above the door on the far end there.

We had the leak repaired (and the skylights–suspected source of leak–removed and drywalled over) before we moved in. And then we put a dog crate in it and left it that way for a year:

In the past few months we’ve made some progress in here. We refinished that big ol’ dresser that’s up against the windows in that picture. And we moved the dog crate out and some real furniture in so that we could hang out in here.

The next order of business was to finally get rid of both the yellow and all that bare drywall from the leak repair.

My paint selection method was pretty simple: I took the card from the paint I used on the big dresser (or, as Dave would say, credenza), (which was Benjamin Moore’s Florida Keys Blue) and picked the lightest color. Which, it so happens, was called Blue Bonnet. This led me to expect it to be more, well…..blue than it turned out to be. It’s a really light blue green, but, if pressed, I’d call it green rather than blue. But, then, the Florida Keys Blue dresser is the same way. Most of the time, I’d call it blue, but in certain lights it’s definitely green. I’m going with aqua, because that’s what I had in my head that I wanted.

This room took forever to paint. It is very big. And we had to paint the ceiling, which is also very big. And three of the four walls are mostly windows, which meant less surface to cover with paint, but also lots and lots of painstaking brush work.

We did primer first, which is not our usual way. But it was clear from the test patch I put on the wall that it was going to take at least 2 coats otherwise, and primer is cheaper than paint. Plus the internet tells me that my paint job will look way more professional with the help of primer, and if the internet says it it must be true.

Two days later, we had this!

It’s so light you’re not really sure what color we painted it, right? Yes. It’s a big, minty box.

You can see the color a little better from this angle, I think:

Here’s a beginning stab at colorful accessories and whatnot. That little thrift store lamp (I recognize the shade from Target, but I got it at the thrift store) is the only source of light in the room, still, but we have a plan that might actually work for fixing the fan light. Saving that for another post.

With the dropcloth curtains down (they need to be hemmed and cut into panels before they go back up), you can see what rough shape some of the window are in. I’m scared to hear how much it will cost to replace them.

And, because I don’t want to do a whole post about it, I got unlazy enough to move the pinwheels into the dining room and throw together some 4th of July-ish stuff on the buffet in there. I kept bringing in more and more books, so I’m pretending an American literature theme was my plan all along. Mark Twain is heavily featured. I want to switch out the flowers for president cards, but….uhh, well, I haven’t yet.