Green in the face.

The living room is finished! I did not meet my goal of having it done by Wednesday (turns out when you run hard all weekend and then continue into Monday and Tuesday nights, by Wednesday you are feeling kind of exhausted and stabby) but it turned out that the radio membership drive wasn't even all that bad when I was finishing yesterday, so it was a needless goal in the first place. Needless goals! Sometimes useful, but no need to beat yourself up for not meeting them.

You'll recall the before. Beigey peach + red accent wall. It just wasn't doing it for us. We sampled 10 colors before we arrived at our combination of ceiling and wall color. I'm going to blame the fact that I bought a fan deck for our inability to be decisive. Every time something didn't grab us, there were a thousand more colors at our fingertips. But this is the biggest room in the house, so we really wanted to get it right. 

And in our minds, we did. Here's the after. The wall color is Behr Egyptian Nile and the ceiling is Sagey. They're two shades apart in the fan deck, which I had read was a good approach to getting a ceiling and wall color that worked well together. And now I agree. I also like how the molding stands out more now that it isn't blending into the white ceiling.  

Here's the opposite view. Now you see a huge palm plant...

... and now you don't. I did end up giving it away on Craigslist. I had wondered if anyone would even be interested, but I got 39 emails about it before I pulled the ad down, so I guess the lesson is don't underestimate the demand for free stuff. 

I would have liked to keep the plant, but this corner was really the only place it worked and we needed the space. Why? Because my piano is getting delivered on Wednesday! Yes, it is a weird expenditure at a time when I said we were trying to buckle down and save for the kitchen, but here's the deal: the piano is at my parents' house in Sioux Falls. My parents also wanted to give us their snowblower, which my dad tells me is top of the line, and we really do want to get a snowblower before winter hits. So I contacted a piano moving place in Sioux Falls and asked for a quote for both items. It turned out that another family in our area was waiting for someone else to do the same move from Sioux Falls, therefore we could both get a discount by sharing the mileage. So we went for it. It's certainly less than a new snowblower would have cost, and so the piano is like a bonus on top. (Side note: I still need to paint and replace that vent cover.) 

One of the things that was holding me up on Monday and Tuesday nights was the fact that I decided to oil the woodwork while we had all the furniture pushed away. As it turns out, there is a lot of woodwork. It was kind of a workout, but I'm guessing it hadn't been done in a long long time, so I feel better now. 

So, it's very green. It's also Very Serious. It's a Very Serious Room at the moment. I keep saying, "I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany." That atmosphere is not our ultimate goal, but I think once we hang up some of our art and get new curtains we can inject a little levity and quirk and arrive at the right balance.

This project was a doozy and I'm reaaalllly glad it's done. This room is about 500 square feet, and I'm pretty sure my last apartment as a single lady was 450. I know that both the dark wall color and the fact that we painted the ceiling condense things visually a bit, but I feel like this room can take it, if that makes sense. Now it feels big, but warm. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much ideal for a living room.