This month, Jim and I celebrated 10 years as homeowners. When we bought our house in 2006, we were both single (about to become engaged) with no kids, no pets and were coming from a 900 square-foot apartment. This place was a palace.

With two kids now and a dog, we find ourselves filling out this “palace” quite nicely and although we don’t need more space, an extra room has been on our wish list for a while.

Last month, we started the process of closing out the front room, the “library” to be used as our official guest room and also a playroom/storage area for the girls’ toys.

BEFORE:

When you walked into the house it was kind of like – BAM! Welcome to our living room and check out all the toys! There wasn’t really a transition from outside to inside and the first thing people would see when they walked in is a carpet full of the girls’ stuff. (I tidied them up for these pictures.) Jim built a murphy bed over the summer that pulls down from the white cabinet – that’s where my parents sleep when they come to visit. (They were such troopers at Christmas being on display the whole time!)

DURING:

AFTER CONSTRUCTION // BEFORE PAINT:

At the start of the project, I knew I wanted to give the door a pop of color since most of the rest of our house is all neutral. I have a hard time embracing color and tend to stick with what’s safe and more or less timeless. (Heck! We’ve been here a decade already!)

The thing with choosing paint color is…

… it is just so hard for me. I liken it to choosing a baby name. It’s all fun in theory but when it comes down to it, making a decision is incredibly difficult. That’s why the nurses flagged us down as we tried to leave the hospital with newborn baby Harper who still had yet to be named. “Excuse me?! You forgot this paperwork!” Oh yeah… about that… Um… ? Harper? Finley? Charlie? Emmaline? Merritt? Kate? Harper? Harper. (Of course she is a Harper!)

When it came time for us to choose a paint provider, I knew right away we would be using Sherwin-Williams. Two years ago, we lived temporarily in Las Vegas for Jim’s job and before we moved back, we put in new floors and had the whole house painted. Choosing a paint color, long-distance is not advised. It took us three tries to find the right one. After the second failed attempt at finding the perfect “greige”, I chose a new paint store (Sherwin-Williams) because they have locations both in Reno and Las Vegas. The woman who helped me nailed it with her quick and precise suggestion of Worldly Grey. She helped me call the order in to the Reno store and it was that easy. Later, my friend Lisa Skyped with me from the house, I was so relieved when I saw the color on the wall that didn’t look like a baby blue nursery. It was the perfect grey.

So, we’re keeping the Worldly Grey for the wall color and just needed to decide on what color to paint the doors. I was thinking primary colors. Originally, both Jim and I thought red. Then I was all about a yellow. Then, my love for navy blue started to influence my decision making. I even thought a kelly green could be fresh and fun. I was all over the board so I went online and played around with the ColorSnap® Visualizer that allows you to upload your own photos (or use one of theirs) to paint your own scene, trying out the different colors in your palette. Do we like Afternoon yellow?

Ultimately, here are the three choices we narrowed it down to:

1. Honey Bees (lighter yellow)
2. Afternoon (richer yellow)
3. Salty Dog (dark blue)

Any guesses which one we chose?

Tune in on Thursday next week for the official after photos and grand reveal to see what color we ended up with.

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A huge thanks to Sherwin-Williams for providing paint as compensation for this post. All views and opinions expressed are my own and no other compensation was provided.