A Grey Gallery Wall

Do you ever make a job bigger in your mind that it really ends up being?  When we moved into our old schoolhouse the walls were all white...and 12 feet high. The tall walls overwhelmed me and so I couldn't deal with painting them.

But, after taking down my gallery wall for Christmas, I decided after Christmas was the perfect time to paint it my favorite neutral color, a warm grey.

This grey paint is called Livingston Gray from Pratt and Lambert and it is such a nice color. Not too dark, not too light and it has a hint of warmness to it.  I picked a color that had a dark brown looking color as the top darkest color rather than a straight black color.  That way I knew it had some of the warmer beige/brown tones in it.

We didn't paint our entire great room, but the largest wall area in the room, and it was nearly as difficult as I had imagined. Then I had fun redoing the gallery wall (see how the gallery wall looked before HERE).  

I used many of the same things I had, but included a few new things.

I made this sunburst mirror with a garage sale vintage clock and a $.25 mirror from the thrift store. When I removed the (broken) clock and its surround the mirror fit into the clock frame perfectly.  I thought about painting it, but the color matches the wood on the frame of the 1898 pencil drawn map of our town. It reflects light well from the windows on the opposite side of the room.

I bought this BIG marquee letter L (and two of the other L's) from the antique place where I work.  It was a dirty white so I painted it with Fusion Mineral Paint in Midnight , which is a nice navy blue, which is so lovely on the grey wall.

I also used the copper Fusion Mineral Paint to paint a little metal L from Michaels.

I love a fresh new look for a new year. What home projects are you working on?