The Painted Wall

Here's a close look at the newly-painted wall in our great room.  And on the right are new vertical blinds. They replaced insulating shades which got old and hard to use.
This wall is now a grayish-tan color. We had a hard time choosing it. We tried a tiresome number of paint samples. Off-white was too bright when sunlight floods into the room (which is all day long). A beige that looked good on a paint chip turned out to look like a flesh-colored crayon on the wall. (Yuck!) Other beiges were disappointing too. ("That's funny, it didn't look lavender in the store.") On the fourth (fifth?) trip to Lowe's we selected this color, which Frank says is light brown but I see as a warm gray. It looks good in warm light but depressingly gray on a cloudy day (to me). 

We used a low-odor paint and even a low-odor primer. They covered very well considering how porous and dry the old barn wood is.

Saturday the new blinds came and they make the paint color look better. A young lady installed them but discovered that the headrail on one is damaged so it will have to be replaced. For now they work with a little extra effort. The blinds are textured off-white, not the bright white that you see in the picture, in which they are reflecting the sunlight.

We bought them from Budget Blinds this time, after an unsuccessful attempt to buy them from Penneys. I've learned that hiring people to do remodeling projects is just as likely to involve problems as doing it yourself, and more likely to involve extensive delays.