Gray Shingle.

Gray Shingle at 7AM.

For all four of you that commented or sent a text with your opinion, the grays came in with an even two votes each. Initially I'd been leaning more towards the cooler of the two but after moving them all over our loft and seeing how they looked in both morning and evening light, I decided the warmer-toned gray was the way to go. So we bought the Gray Shingle and started painting our dining and living room walls over the weekend.

And after the first coat was on, I was like, Oh shit. This looks terrible.

That first coat of new paint is completely deceiving, especially when one of the walls being repainted is a bright, royal blue. That blue peeked through the first layer of paint just enough to give our slightly purple gray an even more purplish undertone. And then add the color influence from the blue painters's tape and the reflecting pink tones from the drop cloths and I thought we'd made a huge mistake.

But then the paint dried and we put our furniture back into place and I saw it with our exposed brick and realized I loved it. I better love this paint because with our high ceilings and exposed conduit and pipes coming in and out of walls from all different angles, Lee told me we will never paint this place ourselves again. I don't blame him as this was our fifth go at painting our loft. Here is the rundown of our painting executions: Orange (bathroom). Blue (kitchen + dining). Lavender-y gray (bedroom). Yellow (living-room + bedroom). And then beige (bathroom + living room + bedroom).

Basically you don't want to ask us to help you chose paint.

Since we obviously aren't experts at anything paint-related, we went with our interior designer's recommendation of painting everything from floor to ceiling in one color. So our once white baseboards, door jams and doors are now either Gray Cashmere or Gray Shingle.

I've never understood why baseboards are painted a different color from the walls and now that ours are no longer white and actually match the walls they are attached to, I love how it looks. Our place just has so much going on visually with how it was constructed, the white trim completely distracted from that.

We're still a few weeks away from completing this project but we finally have start dates (!!) for both the building of the permanent wall and the installation of our bathroom vanity and cabinets. And then when this project is over, what will we do with all of our free time?!

The blue walls are no more. And ignore the pile of paint supplies in the background.