When To Use Tinted Primer: a house log

As scheduled, our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore picked up our donation items yesterday. That, combined with us moving tons of frames and accessories into the future playroom (for now), meant the guest bedroom went from this:

To this:

Not exactly ready for the inlaws (who are arriving on Thursday – yikes) but at least it is no longer a junkyard.

The reason that photo was taken after dark was because once Clara went to bed last night we chose to earn ourselves some brownie points and paint the room. Yup, we are total suck ups who enjoy extra credit. We figured it’d be easier to paint while it is empty (the new bed is coming early next week- details on that soon) and with Clara asleep we figured we’d seize the day night.

So by morning the room was looking a bit more like this:

The color is sort of a stoney pale blue, that has hints of purple in some lights. We figured it was neutral sufficient to not offend any guests and if we ever had a baby boy down the road we’d already have the nursery walls ready. Vivid, right?

Okay, we are totally joking. That is not paint, it is simply tinted primer. Did we get you? Sorry, we simply could not resist the momentary fake out.

But as you’ve likely figured out already is that tinted primer = dark paint. We have been itching to try a dramatic dark color somewhere in the house so we figured we’d simply go for it in this room. Why not be a bit adventurous for a guest, right? We figure a dark enveloping room would be pleasant to sleep in (some of our go-to hotel rooms have been deeply saturated), and thanks to having two walls with windows (plus another window in the adjoined bathroom) the room in fact gets a fair amount of light.

Let us simply say the color is quite dark and quite outside of our comfort zone, but we are geeky excited about it for some reason. Likely because it makes us want to wet our pants. Simply a little. For now we will leave our choice a mystery (oooh, secrets) until we get the room painted this weekend and have pictures to share. Descriptions of colors can be tricky, so we’d rather simply show it to you anyway.

Oh and this is in fact our first time using tinted primer. With such a deep color on the agenda, we knew it would likely assist with coverage and the richness of the color that we end up with, so we went for it. We chose Olympic Premium Primer because it is 100% VOC free (and simply $12 for a gallon). It was fairly straightforward to use – not nasty like the oil-based stuff, and not quite smelly at all. But it was a little thin, so we had to be extra careful to avoid drips or wipe them up when they occurred (which might in fact be the case with all water-based primers since we are comparing it to our run-ins with the oil-based stuff from back in the day). Fingers crossed that it does the trick. You know, so we do not find ourselves needing ten coats of paint to get the deep rich tone that we are going for. We only got one gallon of paint so we are hoping that is all we need…