Does Anyone Paint Dining Room Red In 2017

There's nothing similar an impromptu project while trying to become a bunch of other projects finished. Just sometimes, it just has to happen.

Dorsum in 2003 when we bought our fixer upper in Old Town ruby-red was my favorite color. It was the color I selected for my bridesmaids' dresses when we married in October 2002, comprised about a 3rd of the clothes in my closet, and naturally, I wanted to feature it as a chief color in our new dwelling's decorating scheme.

Back in the early 2000s bold crimson dining rooms were all the rage and we thought it would look great in our Victorian home. To fulfill our dream when we renovated our dining room in 2004, after some deliberation, we landed on Behr'due south Red Red Wine equally the hue of choice. We excitedly dove into the projection, having no inclination of what lie alee. One coat of headache-inducing bright pink tinted primer later, we were committed. We had no clue how hard would it be to paint a saturated red on our newly plastered walls.

Oh boy, were we DIY noobs. An excruciating one coat of primer and iv coats of red pigment subsequently, we finally reached the desired colour and our dark and dramatic dining room look was achieved.

We loved the end result, but there was no denying the corporeality of attempt to achieve this expect was way more than nosotros had bargained for. Ruby-red takes so many coats to get total coverage, and back in 2004 we weren't using higher quality paint, which only meant more coats.

Every bit a result, I swore to Alex that:

I loved the colour
It was well worth the endeavor
Nosotros would only use high quality paint from that signal frontwards
And we would never repaint the room

This Scarlet Ruby-red Wine dining room was certainly dramatic, and our guests ofttimes commented on the colour. It was fifty-fifty on the encompass of Old House Journal several years ago when they did a story on our house, talk about surreal.

Fast frontward roughly eleven years from when offset painted the room and I had kept all of my promises. Only the trouble is that I was quickly falling out of beloved with our cerise dining room.

While the color looked great for the holidays and made for a cozy and moody backdrop for dinner parties, information technology besides felt dark and oppressive during the day and especially during the spring/summer months.

The paint itself also wasn't property up well and had developed a chalky finish in places. For example, in trying to grit the walls or wipe off smudges, any surface area nosotros tried to clean would then have a smeared, white residue. In short, not only was I ready to motion past my ruby obsession, it was fourth dimension to freshen up the infinite.

For the final two years I've been laying the groundwork, mentally trying to fix my spouse for the inevitable project, knowing that I'd be met with resistance. I've hinted, hung color swatches, made passing remarks, discussed it while we ate dinner in the room, and mostly commented on information technology for years. I fifty-fifty ordered a new chandelier this summer for the room, which fortunately was on backorder, as it allowed me more time to get him comfortable with the change.

And so, in my true "jump effectually" approach to DIY renovation, I decided I simply couldn't live another mean solar day with the red walls. Forget that Alex is elbow deep in our window restoration project, we were frantically preparing our master bathroom for a mag photo shoot, had family unit coming into town for a visit, and were a mere two weeks from our almanac Halloween party. This project was happening...At present.

I fully admit the timing was terrible. For all of the reasons I mentioned above equally well as the fact that we had just put out all of our Halloween decorations, thus essentially increasing the corporeality of stuff that we needed to move out of the dining room and later cram into our side by side living room while the painting was underway. I'm a total neat freak, so living in this type of chaos makes me crazy.

Afterward we cleared out the smaller items and artwork from the room, we applied a starting time glaze to the walls using Benjamin Moore's Fresh Start interior primer. Alex tackled the cutting in, while I managed the rolling.

I also worked to choose a new color. My inclination is to go more than gray (I've been on a SW Agreeable Gray kick lately), only in doing and so knew that wouldn't work well with the beige tones of our living room sofa, rugs, and artwork. And then I ended upwardly choosing the more biscuit cousin of Agreeable Grayness in SW's Accessible Beige. It's safety, a petty wearisome actually, but it would work with the adjacent rooms, lighten upwardly the space, and give the states the fresh look I'm after.

After working long days, we were tackling the priming and painting each night without any natural lite. On night two nosotros put on the first glaze of Accessible Beige, and we both hated it. It had more than of a butterscotch look in that information technology appeared very yellow. Alex was very song about his dislike of the color, and internally I was freaking out. Why couldn't I leave well enough lone? Why didn't I buy exam pigment? Why didn't I get more gray? Why did I insist on starting this projection at present? What was I thinking??

We called it a night after the first coat was up and the adjacent day I collection to our local Arhaus to choice upwardly our new lite fixture, the Hemisphere Geode chandelier in antiqued brass, which had finally come in. The box it was packaged in was enormous, and just barely fit in the back of our SUV which yous can see in the photo below.

I excitedly unpacked the chandelier and placed information technology on the table, and then we continued our painting efforts.

After we started painting the walls, unfortunately information technology became readily apparent that the trim paint had seen ameliorate days. Now 13 years in, it was scuffed and muddy, and we knew we needed to get a fresh coat on all the molding and fireplace mantel. Alex tackled this step, which added an boosted mean solar day to the projection, simply information technology was well worth it.

While we both initially disliked the color later one coat, we kept going. We wanted to completely finish the molding and cutting in of the color before we rolled the final coat of paint. But once that second glaze went onto the wall, it was nearly immediately looking meliorate.

Full coverage of paint, no more than streaks of visible primer, and with a fresh coat of trim paint on all baseboards, window and door casing, and crown, the whole room suddenly started looking more like I had envisioned.

We both breathed a sigh of relief when it all started to take shape, then I turned my sights to installing the new chandelier.

This new chandelier is a significant departure from what nosotros typically have in our habitation, but I'm very excited about information technology. I love the geometric aspects to it and think the larger only transparent space it occupies actually makes the room wait larger around it. The cease event of our few days of attempt painting, a new chandelier, and some inexpensive new defunction is exactly what I had hoped for when I nudged my cooperative spouse to commencement this project.

Sure, he may be in the middle of a window restoration, and stripping a closet door, merely the smile on my face is hopefully enough to convince him that it was well worth the unexpected (but completely expected) try.

We yet want to supervene upon the rug, re-cover the chairs, find a less massive buffet, and Alex is pulling for a new dining tabular array, but this room now feels less imposing and nighttime, and also appears so much larger with this lighter color. I hate to say it, but I'chiliad actually looking forward to putting away the Halloween decorations so nosotros can meet what the room looks like without holiday decor draped on every surface.