Accent Wall: the fireplace

I made a list at the beginning of this month hoping to get me motivated and to pay some attention to some areas of the house that needed some love. 

One of the things I've wanted to do forever since December is to paint an accent wall where the fireplace and TV are. This house is a whole lotta tan. Tan that was painted when the house went on the market. It's a nice color, and it was done beautifully, so I don't feel right repainting the whole space until there are scuffs and marks in a few years. So the accent wall was born.

Here's a before:

A few things to note. We lowered the TV about 4 inches. It's really not that noticeable, but it was enough to cover the outlets behind it. When we first hung it, we just centered it on the whole wall, not giving a thought to the outlets. Then we went through 3 sound bars that didn't work out, so we were left with a ridiculous amount of holes in the wall. We decided for now that we're going to do without the sound bar. We weren't impressed with the $200 range ones, so we figured we'll get a really nice one after we save for it. We made sure to leave room underneath for one just in case. 

We also left 1 hole visible for the wires for the eventual soundbar. That's the one dot under the TV. It's much less in your face now that everything has been lowered. 

Eventually down the line we will be adding built-ins in those nooks. So this really is just a "phase 1" fix to get us through until we are ready to pull out the big guns. Excited for them, but really happy with this simple, quick fix for now!

I also considered painting the whole column (not just the front of the wall), but I figured I could get a cleaner line by just painting the front as opposed to where the "column" meets the back wall. 

As for the color? I knew I wanted a blue. Early on I thought I wanted brown, but brown with a black TV and lots of brown accents in the room (hello huge brown couches) begged for a light airy color.

I'm cheap and I didn't want to have to buy paint. So I raided our supply (mostly colors from our old house). You can see how I organized our paint here. 

I had a quart sized mason jar full of "Silver Strand". It was the color I used when I painted an accent wall in our old house. I did it in stripes with 1 stripe being Silver Strand eggshell sheen, the the other stripe being Silver Strand semi-gloss sheen. See it on the far wall in our old bathroom? We loved it. 

After patching a few holes, and a little over an hour of work it was DONE! And I love how nicely it plays off of our new lampshade {and rug}! You can see the color next to the rug in the first picture. 

Projects like this make me happy! $0 dollars spent and a little sweat equity really pays off big time!