Ch-ch-changes!!

About six months ago we started talking about taking our window treatments down. I am home all day with the kids and not having enough natural light was starting to get to me.

But when you take them down, what do you replace them with? Anything? We live in a very private area and my preference was nothing at all on the Windows, but was that too weird? I think we must have talked it over for ages, with little progress.

When Andrew's papa arrived a few weeks ago we still hadn't come to a decision, but I was still wanting the light. Part of the issue, we thought, might be the paint. Our house has quite a few sharp angles and with two shades of gray (heh) being at the ceiling, it was time to take it all to one shade of something super light and take the emphasis off the ceiling. But what?

Andrew jumped in and suggested blue and I said no right away. Weirdo. I was all for a light neutral tan, by he was insistent that we were just not doing that.

Right as we started trying to choose a paint color, the kitchen started annoying the heck out of me and I suddenly couldn't stand the floors at all. I just started to feel like the place was closing in on me. So, since they say to try changing the paint first, we decided to get moving on the paint. Andrew won and we chose blue. Well, he chose blue and I just kind of threw my hands up. I had nothing better, after all.

We went to Lowes and bought five gallons of "something icy blue with no green that would just barely make the trim pop but would appear mostly white." 

We held up a few paint chips and just went with "that one." Basically went against every paint-choosing rule out there. We brought it home and it sat in the dining room for a couple days while I chatted with Katherine and told her it was probably the wrong color. We took down all of our Roman shades and pulled out the solar screens. We had taken them down the week we moved in and I don't think we rely gave them a fair shot. While we waited for the house to paint itself we washed the screens and put them back up. And we loved them. We got our view back and still kept our privacy.

Then we started painting. And it was perfect. The kitchen makes sense. The floors look right. The house is open and light and airy. It looks clean and fresh and so inviting. Andrew was so right on the color. It pulled the entire living space together and it truly, truly feels like the home I envisioned from the start. 

Sometimes it can take some time to understand what you really want a space to feel like. I thought "cozy" for me meant dark walls and privacy. It turns out that my version of home is a space where you can breathe deeply, stretch out, see the view and watch the kids run. This feels like home.