This weekend, we’re painting… again. When we spent 2 entire weeks painting every room in the house before we moved in. At that point, we were in love with the colors, and thought we’d be in love with them forever. Well, apparently “forever” for paint is about a year. We’re changing it up this weekend in Greg’s office.

Before I get to all of that, let me back up a second. Here’s what Greg’s office is looking like these days…

Actually, this photo was taken a while ago, but it still looks pretty much the same, except the shelf in the corner is on the wall and the floor lamp is near the door. I know, I really need to take updated photos. I don’t know if you guys remember or not, but a few weeks ago, we posted a random mood board for a home office that was a lot less “modern geek” and more along the lines of “modern old school”. If you don’t remember, check it out here. In the post, I talked about how I was floored when I showed Greg the board. He totally surprised me by saying, “Yeah, I really like that. Actually, I think I’d like something like that for my office.” For a few days, I thought maybe we were going to ditch the “modern geek” and go full force with the old school modern vibe of the mood board. But then I pointed out that if we switched gears, that meant bye bye abacus. The boy loooooves his abacus. Well, abaci, because there are two. I just hate saying “abaci” because it makes me sound pretentious. I got them for his birthday about a month before we actually moved into the house. We get a ton of compliments on them, and it’s a fun way to bring out Greg’s not-so-inner geek. That being the case, we’re back on-board the modern geek train. After all, he’s a geek.

With all of that being said, our first mission is to upgrade the medium beige/gray paint (Martha Stewart’s Cobblestone) with a much bolder option: charcoal gray. Greg really liked what I did with Abram’s room and how, even though the walls are black, the room didn’t feel dark and gloomy one bit. His office is small yet has two windows that bring in a lot of light. On top of that, his desk, as well as the shelves we’re planning on putting up above the desk, are all white – kind of like this photo I pinned on Pinterest. With those two inspirations coming into play, the room could stand to go a little darker than the current light gray / beige. Okay, a lot darker.

We narrowed it down to two shades of gray: Seal by Martha Stewart and Dark Granite by Behr. They look almost identical on camera – and even surrounded by all of the other choices at the paint counter, they looked super similar. On the other hand, they have totally different undertones. The Dark Granite has a lot of blue undertones and the Seal is a bam, in your face, pure gray.

Here they are up on the walls…

The top is Seal and the bottom is Dark Granite. It really bugs me that the swatches aren’t the same shape. Greg put up one and I put up the other, so it is what it is. But it still bugs me.

We thought it would be important to be able to see the colors on multiple walls so we could get an actual feel of how it would look at all angles and lighting. That being the case, we also threw up a sample on the other side of the room next to the door because this is the wall that gets all of the sunlight. The other swatch is right next to the window and the abacus abaci so that gave us an idea of what it will look like against the trim and with the “big wall art statement”.

After sleeping on it, we’ve decided that we’re just going to bite the bullet and go with the darker one (Seal). I love the look of small rooms with bold, dark walls and Greg likes the idea of it giving the room a more cozy / modern feeling. So, for us, it’s a win win. This will totally transform the current look of the room and get us a little closer to where we want to go.

We’re also hoping to sneak in an Ikea trip over the weekend at some point. It’s an hour and thirty minute drive for us, so we’re not completely sure if that’s going to happen yet, but fingers crossed. It’d be nice to get the shelving to go above his desk that’s been on our to do list for months. Oh, and of course, some Swedish meatballs.