Thank Goodness Paint Swatches Are Free....

... because I've been smuggling a boat-load of them out of Home Depot and Lowe's.

What's the reason for my most recent trip to the paint departments? Well, aside from the fact that I still have not decided on a hallway bathroom/laundry room/master bathroom paint color (they will all probably be the same color) I've decided to paint- not stain- the bathroom vanity.

Here's how I came to that decision. First of all- last I posted I said my staining days were probably over. That statement was probably made more out of my defeat for that particular project but I'm still not over the burn of the less than stellar results from that undertaking. I decided that I wanted to give it one more shot and see if it was even possible for me to get the junk off that I applied. So I bust out my power sander and got to work. Thankfully, and to my complete surprise, it didn't take much elbow grease or sand paper to get it all off. The down side is that with wood cabinets like ours, the stain really sinks into the wood grain- leaving us with this:
The door on the left shows what it looked like before my staining debacle while the one on the right shows what I'm working with after sanding it down... again. I didn't think it was that big of a deal because, after all, if I was planning on slapping on another layer of dark stain it would just cover it right up.

New problem. Turns out the veneer on our cabinets is pretty thin. So after sanding down everything I had completely gone through some parts of the veneer entirely leaving this:
The problem with this is that with the veneer gone the stain will soak in differently and unevenly. So staining is now completely off the table.

New solution- enter paint swatches. People paint their vanities white all the time and it looks amazing. So why can't I paint it a deep, rich brown? After all, it worked out on our kitchen cabinets. So I slapped these babies up to look at them for the next day or two and hopefully I can begin painting this weekend. I've already narrowed it down to six paint colors- I immediately tossed two of them once I got them in the room- leaving me with these options:
I also picked up some new paint colors for the wall. After my recent epiphany that I'm sticking with safe (and not fun) color and design schemes I thought that maybe I should try to spice things up a bit. So I got these new swatches:
I am already proud of myself for picking these new brighter colors! I'm really liking the look of them too :) I haven't completely tossed my old swatches though... these ones are still up in the laundry room:

If the hallway bathroom turns out amazing with a bright color maybe I'll even work up the courage to get different colors for the master bathroom and laundry room!