Mellow Yellow

Has anyone ever painted a room yellow before? It’s a hard color to get right! What started as a Saturday afternoon project of painting the bathroom, turned into a week-long process.

My inspiration for the color was our new bath rug:
Isn’t it pretty? I looked at Target, TJ Maxx, Younkers, World Market, and any place else I could think of that sold bath mats with no success. Well, I did buy two yellow ones at World Market that I still need to return. My goal with the rug was to cover up as much of the ugly linoleum as possible, so I was looking for something big, 3′x5′ to be exact! In a dream world, we would rip out the huge soaking tub/shower that you have to use a step to get into and put in a glass shower and pretty tile on the floor. That’s not in the budget right now, but a rug and new paint were!

I ordered the rug from Urban Outfitters. I know what you’re thinking, Urban Outfitters only sells hipster clothes. Which is true, they sell a ridiculous amount of ’80s inspired apparel, BUT they also have some pretty amazing (and affordable) rugs and furniture. I can’t find the rug I got on the site, but here’s one that’s similar. You should definitely check it out (and no, I was not paid to say this).

Anyway, back to the rug. Here’s a picture of what the bathroom looked like when we moved in. I don’t mind blue walls in a bathroom, but this blue wasn’t doing it for me.
Here it is now. Doesn’t it look so much fresher? It took Adam a few days to get used to it (he liked the blue) but he likes it now. If only getting to this point had been simple! I started by priming the walls. Going from blue to yellow was a big change and when I put the sample over the blue it looked a little green. I also made the mistake of thinking that I could get by with 1 quart of paint for 2 coats. Granted, it’s not a huge bathroom, but a quart of paint doesn’t go very far! I finished 1 coat and was almost out of paint. Does anyone else wish that you could buy a 1/2 gallon of paint? A gallon seems like so much but a quart isn’t enough. Just me?

It ended up being a blessing in disguise that I didn’t buy a gallon of the first color I picked. After it dried, we decided it was a little brighter than what we wanted. So I headed back to Lowe’s and got another quart of paint, just a couple shades lighter. So the color you see is 1 part Homestead Resort Tea Room Cream, and 1 part Cream Cake.

I also decided that since we’ve been married almost 7 years and haven’t bought any towels since our wedding it was time to get new. These are actually a pretty green, they look kind of grey in this picture.