Paint Revisited

Basically...painting really stresses me out.  Especially when you're using a paint with a ton of pigment that dries really fast.  For the blue in the kitchen, we decided on Benjamin Moore's New York State of Mind.  Because the blue was so dark and rich in color, we knew we needed a really good paint quality, so we went with the Aura Paint, the highest quality paint BM makes.  While it was quite a bit more expensive that just your standard paint, it was absolutely worth every penny.  It was around $60 a gallon, but I can say with total confidence, that had we not purchased the nicer paint it would have taken 4x as much paint to cover that room, and we would have probably spent as much on the cheaper paint because we would have needed more.  The sample can we got of the New York State of Mind was just the stand paint Benjmain Moore has, and when we painted the sample on the wall it took SO many coats to even cover it and it looked kinda "meh."  It was a totally different story with the Aura paint.

The Aura paint covered SO well...the wallpaper that we took down in the kitchen was VERY difficult and we really struggled to remove it.  There were lots of areas on the wall that were noticeably shallower or just deformed because of all of the repairing and sanding we had to do after the wallpaper was down.  The Aura paint covered every imperfection in 1 coat.  Seriously...1 freaking coat.  The only downside was that it dries SO fast (yup,  that's a downside).  I couldn't work quick enough to keep a wet edge, and was struggling to move the ladder to the next area so that I could seamlessly continue the painting without my previous application drying first.  The first coat looked AWESOME, but I ended up doing another coat just because I knew it would make it look even better...and it did.  I didn't take any after pictures when it was all completed, but here are a few "during" pictures from my trusty iPhone...

The kitchen all prepped...wallpaper gone, and cabinet frames cleaned.

First coat of the New York State of Mind done...no trim/cabinet frames painted yet

First coat of the New York State of Mind done...no trim/cabinet frames painted yet...sorry for the terribly pic quality.

Daylight picture of 1 coat of blue and some trim paint done.  This picture is probably the most true to the actual color of the trim and the blue.

The next 3 pictures were all taken late at night with really poor lighting so the color is way off, but they are pictures of 2 coats of the New York State of Mind and I think almost all of the trim and cabinet framing done.  Of course, I still have lots and lots of touchups to do :(

I guess I have a few pictures from my actual camera I took early on in the process of painting the kitchen...

Without internet or cable yet it is kind of hard to stay entertained while painting for hours, so my iPad and streaming Netflix...I think I watched 5 documentaries (seriously).

I kind of like the way the frog tape looks next to the blue :)

There is still a lot of touching up to do in the kitchen, and I'm just kind of stressed out about all of the edges and how they aren't super clean...but I guess that will all come in time...

-Annie