Changing Things Up....The Living Room...

So I've been working on changing up some of the decor` in my apartment. I've had a lot of the same stuff & same color schemes for several years & I'm over a lot of it. Slowly I've been getting stuff here & there & changing things up. I've had the same dark red & gold colors in my living room for who knows how long & I've really been wanting to brighten things up. I decided on a light blue & cherry red color scheme. Finding the blue was as easy as could be. Finding the right cherry red has proven to be QUITE a challenge. It has to be just the right red. There's quite an empty space in one spot in my living room so I decided I wanted to get a bench/trunk to put there that I could store things in & that people could sit on should we run out of seating space. And I decided I wanted it to be cherry red! Of course I couldn't just waltz up to any store & find a cherry red bench/trunk so I had to have one built. A little bit of a pricey project but I was able to have it exactly the size & look that I wanted it to be. Finding just the right color of red for it was no small task! I had the unfinished bench at my apartment for several days so I could audition my paint samples.


My 1st round of samples & swatches...none of them were the right color.

I had spent a small fortune on paint samples & hadn't found just the right red. Then one day I was blog stalking & came across a woman who had painted a set of chairs just the color red I was looking for & turns out she had used a spray paint. Who knew?!


There are 4 or 5 different colors on this blasted bench! But the cherry red spray paint was finally the one!!!

When all was said & done the spray paint, although THE perfect color red, wasn't the best thing to use on this wood. Apparently it just soaked it all up & the coverage was horrible. In the end 4 cans of primer & 5 cans of paint had to be used totaling about 15 coats before the coverage & color were just right. I'm sure some brain cells were lost on this project!!

But it turned out so great & just how I pictured it color & all!!

I'll have pics of the whole living room makeover soon!!