Accent Wall Sneak Peek!

Alternate post titles....1) a bunch of pictures that are so far from being Pinterest-worthy or 2) real-time, real-life makeover....

A few posts back I mentioned I was in the middle of making over our bedroom for the millionth time.  I showed off our TV gallery wall that was (ahem, I mean is) 99.9% complete and I'm here to share another project for that room that isn't quite finished...but it's oh-so-close!

This was a project that both scared and excited me.  It's been floating around in my head for a very long time (for real...this makeover has been underway, mostly in my head, for almost a year), but I kept going back-and-forth on it.  Going forward would mean painting over my beloved Balmy Seas and tackling a stencil project on top of that.  {You would think I'd be sick of stenciling after this, this and this...but nope, I'm still smitten with the results.}

I realize I was hemming and hawing over something that was just paint, and if it didn't work out, I could just get more beautiful blue-green paint, sand down the stencil and repaint my wall, AGAIN...but to be honest, the thought of putting all that work into something I could totally hate didn't sound like fun.  Time is so precious, and I have about one million other DIY projects to tackle! ;)

So I put the project off for months, but it never disappeared from my thoughts.  I took that as a sign to stop being scared and lazy.  I needed to get the idea out of my head and onto the wall to see if I would actually like it.

Spoiler alert, I didn't like it, I loooved it!  And thankfully, hubby did too.

We started here.

(Those super cool wall decals are from the amazing Julia!  You should check out her shop...she's on vacation now, but will be returning soon!)

The decals, mirror and DIY lucite curtain rod came down, and it was time to paint.

I used the same dark gray that I painted the rest of our room (Martha Stewart's Zinc matched to Glidden paint).  It took two solid coats to cover.  

I liked it when it was done, but I'm not going to lie, I was a little skeptic.  I think I was used to having a pop of something...and now there was just a whole lot of gray going on.  Gray walls, gray lamps, gray bed frame, gray bench, gray rug.  I semi-freaked, but then reminded myself to keep moving forward because I will be swapping a few of those gray items out of the room and I have grand DIY-makeover plans to add in the much needed "pop" that was now lacking in the space.

After the wall was dry I assembled the tools to get my stenciling done.  I dug out an amazing stencil I purchased from the very talented Sarah (ummmm, last July!!!), a small container of Minwax's Polycrylic in Gloss, some Krylon spray adhesive, a drop cloth, small paint tray and small foam roller.

In my head, I envisioned this stencil to have a gloss-on-matte, wallpaper-ish effect.  The paint I used on my walls was a flat finish and instead of buying another can in a gloss finish, I headed to our basement and grabbed a small container of gloss polycrylic I had on hand.   Yay for being cheap thrifty!

After the first pass, I was nervous.  Since I was using polycrylic and not paint, the pattern looked AWFUL when it went on.  Instead of panicking, I pretended it looked fantastic and continued my second pass with the stencil. Thankfully, by the time I finished the first two passes, things were dry, and the light was bouncing off the glossy design, just as I had hoped.  It was a success!!

And here's a peak at the whole wall covered.  

I just have a few tiny things to touch up, and then I'll be able to officially cross this project off the "master bedroom refresh" to-do list!!

Anyone else have a mid-way project freak-out?!  Did it turn out okay in the end??

The Dark Side.

This post isn't nearly as ominous as the title sounds.  I'm simply referring to the fact that I painted our master bedroom...again.  Third times the charm, right? ;)

The first time we painted the room, I chose a gray that read not-gray-at-all on our walls.  I loved the color, but it just wasn't what I wanted for our room.

After living with it for a while, I decided I needed to go more gray...and I did.

I liked that color a lot, and then I even rearranged and painted again.

After all that, I liked our room, but I didn't love it.  I wanted to love it.  And apparently, step #1 in loving our room was switching up our nightstands.  Our old ones were great, but looked too small next to our king-sized bed.  I fixed that situation by making over some Craigslist finds.

Step #2 was choosing a new gray for our walls.  I had a major itch to go dark in our bedroom.  I thought it'd really up the cozy factor and give the space that extra something it had been missing.  I headed to Home Depot and brought home a bunch of swatches.  Once the swatches were home and against the wall in our room, I easily narrowed things down to my top three.  Those colors were then taped to our bedroom wall for a few days.  It was obvious to me which color was my favorite {gut reaction based on undertones that showed up once the swatch went up on our wall}, but I was scared to pull the trigger. I never painted any wall that dark before.

Eventually I got sick of staring at the swatches and wanted to see results.  I headed to the store and bought a gallon of Martha Stewart's Zinc {made with Glidden Duo paint}.

I had hubby kindly remove our mounted TV, which I hated because of the positioning, thanks to some plumbing in the center of that wall.  I also patched up some holes with quick-dry spackle.

Then I cleared out furniture, pushed the remaining stuff to the middle of the room and started cutting in.

After all that fun, I got to rolling...and really saw things come to life.

The darker color took two coats to cover completely, but it was worth it.  I love how our white trim and light furniture pop against the bold walls.  I haven't even started to accessorize or put our room back together, but I couldn't wait to share our new wall color with you guys.  I didn't want to wait a few weeks until our room is "reveal" ready.  What can I say...lately, things have been taking me foreverrrr to finish. ;)

Anyone else get so excited to share something that you break all blogger rules and post un-styled photos taken at night?!  {Please tell me I'm not the only bad blogger!}

How do you guys feel about dark walls...yay or nay?