So much has happened since I blogged last – home improvements tend to spiral out of control like that I’ve found. First I’d like to share with you our 3/4 finished master bedroom. It was tricky to take photos of but you can see the mustard-bamboo before and the solid blue after on top and bottom respectively: 
I painted the trim a warm, sandy color, called Sand Dollar, that came with the house. It’s also the color of the family room, which is great. Speaking of the family room – remember how I pronounced the carpet salvageable? Well, upon inspection the next morning, not so much. Big, yellow stains were back when everything dried. So we bit the bullet and decided to replace the carpet. Lowe’s was having a stain master sale with free installation so we picked out Stainmaster’s Milky Way, which is a medium beige with darker and lighter flecks in it. Apparently there is no picture of this particular carpet color/style to be found anywhere on the internet, so you’ll just have to imagine its goodness. We are still awaiting installation, it’s the slowest process to get carpet installed, even the in-stock variety.
First, you wait to have someone come to measure the room. Then you make that appointment. When that’s done you wait for that guy to call Lowe’s and then for Lowe’s to call you. Then, when Lowe’s calls you they give you the estimate and you have to go into Lowe’s, and wait in the inevitable four person deep line (complete with one employee who knows everything about the process and one who doesn’t and just stands there confused trying to ask the other person questions) at the flooring counter. Then they give you the packet with your info. Then you go stand in line at checkout to pay. Then you wait for Lowe’s to call you. Then Lowe’s calls you two days later to tell you that you’re now waiting for the instillation people to call you to set up an appointment and this should take eight days. This is where we are at. I assume after the instillation people call, we set and appointment and wait for that and then…maybe…we will have carpet. Between this and the paint guy refusing to tint Olympic paint in a Valspar color shade (which every other hardware store does with color matching technology) I’m not a big fan of Lowe’s right now.
At least said paint guy abruptly found his happy place by tinting Valspar paint with the Valspar color and then giving me a discount to the price of the Olympic paint. I suppose that works. Home Depot is more than willing to tint any paint any color…but their color matching is seriously flawed. We cut out a piece of the dining room wall to try and match, as we have no touch up paint, and the previous owners left the wall in pretty rough shape after taking down their pictures and art. Home Depot’s attempt to match got us a color in a whole different color family, and several shades darker than the piece of our wall. I will use it for an accent wall upstairs, but this leaves us having to repaint the entire downstairs (high walls included) as apparently their particular shade of beige is impossible to match. This time I went to Ace Harware, which is close to the house. Everyone was super friendly there, and they were happy to tint their Royal brand paint with a Valspar Color – Creamy Latte. Ace’s Royal paint is highly rated by Good Housekeeping, and it’s $20 less per gallon than Valspar, so fine by me!
It’s lighter than the current wall color, also brighter. The people at Ace were extremely knowledgeable and friendly and I was able to find the HomeRight PaintStick there too. This tool apparently lets you draw paint directly from the can and paint tall walls quite quickly. I’ve heard much praise for this tool, so I’m hoping it will help us not implode from paint overload. 🙂 
I think Ace Hardware will be our go-to from now on, and I will report back on our results with the PaintStick. 
Shelter the Heart 