Choosing a Paint Color: LRV Number

Update: Gooooo Red Sox! What a game. Tired today but totally worth staying up to watch the post game highlights. Warm up the Duck Boats, it's time for a parade! :)

Well, I'm stumped. I'm looking for the right shade of a gray/beige/neutral for our bathroom. I know it must exist, I'm just having the hardest time finding it!

It would make life a lot easier if I just went with something colorful. But you see, that's not how I envision our new bathroom. And while I can usually warm up to a change in plans after reworking them in my head, this one is truly stumping me. I know a warm, light blue would look great in the space. But I don't want a blue bathroom. I want a grey/neutral bathroom. So the search continues.

Some of the colors we've tested include:

Chelsea gray was a little too dark. Rockport gray ended up being way too brownish in our space. I've looked at more grey's on Benjamin Moore's website than I ever knew existed. And 5 samples later, we may have a winner. Stay tuned...

But there's something that J and I found SO helpful (and saved us money from testing even more samples). The LRV number. While we are no experts over here, looking at the Light Reflective Value of the paint color really helped us narrow down our search. What is the LRV you ask? Well, it's the percentage of light reflected from a surface. The higher the LRV, the brighter or more reflective the color. White has an LRV of 100. A really dark color, like Hale Navy has a LRV of 6.98. And this information is listed for each color (at least on SW's and BM's websites)

The LRV of Chelsea gray is 22.81. Another color we originally tested (but that I don't have a pretty picture of) is Sherwin Williams Grayish. This color has an LRV of 61. And we had decided that it was too light in the space.

So as I searched for the perfect color, I ruled out anything lower than 35 or higher than 55 immediately. This really helped narrow down the search.

It's funny, this is probably the only room we'll be able to use a "darker" color in - it's on the south side of our home and gets plenty of natural light. As I mentioned previously (here), we have low ceilings. Any rooms on the front (north) side of our house do not get enough natural light so the dining room color, which is as dark as I would go in that room, has an LRV of 57.11. I find it really hard to tell just how dark a color is online, so reviewing the LRV really helped me visualize the space better.

How do you find the perfect paint color?

I turned to Pinterest and Google images to get an idea of what a paint color might look like, but in the end, the LRV number really was the most useful tool for us.

Happy Halloween!

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Fall Home Maintenance: The Chimney

Quick Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. More details provided below.

A couple weeks ago I shared our plans on hiring a professional for certain maintenance projects (here). In particular, getting our chimney cleaned before using it. I used HomeAdvisor to find a local pro and was not disappointed. The company had amazing reviews on HomeAdvisor's website and I'd have to agree, they were great.

A quick glimpse at the fireplace, as we see it daily right now...closed.

First of all, I rescheduled on him to make sure I could be home - not a problem at all. Then, he comes and quickly realizes our chimney is in dire need of some TLC and the initial, simple cleaning scheduled was just not going to happen yet. Why am I not surprised.....someday, this house will be up to par!

Yikes!

Jay, the chimney guy, cleaned our fireplace (not chimney) of loads of rust left from the old damper the previous owner hadn't replaced in years. He also explained to me that since we have an unused fireplace in our basement (the basement is completely unfinished...) we need to install a much better cap on the outside. Not only are we wasting heat, an empty chimney flu is a breeding ground for animals to nest. Ah! Cap it. Cap it right now.

Lastly, the mortar inside our fireplace is a mess. As he put it nicely, the work was not done by a professional originally. Great....

So, we've scheduled a second appointment with Jay where we'll be having the rusted damper fixed, the mortar fixed, a nice big cap installed outside, and finally, the chimney cleaned. While the initial chimney cleaning was estimated at $160, we're now looking at a much heftier bill of $600. Ouch. But, like I mentioned in my previous post, a clean, properly working chimney is extremely important. So isn't keeping out wildlife! So we need to bite the bullet, suck it up, and take the hit. We had already committed to no Christmas gifts thanks to the bathroom renovation, a million and one weddings, and moving in general. So maybe we say no birthday gifts next year too. A safe home is just a little more important than birthday gifts right now. Just a little...

Because I found it so helpful when looking, I decided to leave my own review on HomeAdvisor's website for Jay's company - Cornerstone Chimney. Like I've mentioned, this site is super easy to use. I love that it remembers what professionals I've looked for to date, which made it soeasy to find the info necessary to leave a review - company name and location.

And then on to the review

Note the number of 5 star reviews this company has....if you're local to me, I definitely recommend them! And if you're not local, here's the link to find your own professional in your area.

Looking forward to our first clean, safe fire later this fall!

Disclaimer: I've teamed up with HomeAdvisor this month as part of their Blog Ambassador Program. Although this post is sponsored by HomeAdvisor, all opinions expressed are my own.

HomeAdvisor

Fun Fact Friday 10.25.13

Oh boy. Happy Friday! Indeed. The beginning of this week went by so slow for me, but now I can't believe it's already Friday. Where did the week go?

Here's a few glimpses at what's been going on over here:

1. I had the opportunity to work from home yesterday. So I took it as an opportunity to run to the hardware store at 7 am to pick up paint samples. Typically I'm leaving the house at 7 for work so it was nice to have a chance to get a few errands done. Gotta love Benjamin Moore coupons when you're in the midst of painting your whole house!

2. I posted this photo to instagram Wednesday night. If you don't know, Tucker is a huge snuggler. Huge! He's such a stinker though. He will groan and moan if you ask him to lie with you and once he's in the perfect snuggling position, he passes out cold in seconds. And is such a little cuddly baby!

3. Having grown up in the '90's there are a few movies I remember watching that were definitely before my time but I loved them anyways. One was Fried Green Tomatoes. Another, Steel Magnolias. The house the Steel Magnolias was filmed in is up for auction. You can check it out here.

4. I started this week off feeling pretty good about the amount of work we got down on the house last weekend. But the anxiety is creeping back in. Time to start this weekends list. I think it will include:

• Filling the wood holes, priming, and painting the baseboards and windows in the spare bedroom 
• Painting the final coat on the board & batten in the bathroom
• Finding the perfect color for the top half of the bathroom walls
• Sampling colors in the living room

5. Last weekend we had pictures taken in front of our new home. It was something our mortgage company set-up and I couldn't be more grateful. Yes, they did it for their own benefit - they have a showcase of "happy homeowners" that they were adding us to - but hey I'll take free professional photos any day! We definitely felt a little silly when cars would drive by but I can't wait to see the pictures! As the sun set, the photographer asked us to run in and turn every light in the front of the house on. It reminded me of a great photo YHL captured and I loved the idea so much. So I snuck a photo after the photographer left. I am so happy in our new home!

Have a fantastic weekend!

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