I’ve been putting in time in the family room, trying to get to a place where things just make more sense, but I’ve been stalled on this built-in cabinet. I’ll admit that it’s useful, displaying pottery hoards/Salton Sea relics in an uncluttered way up top and housing board games below. On the flip side, it competes with the fireplace and, while not the ugliest, is a far cry from the custom walnut shelves/walnut mantel/insane vintage light combo of my dreams. Considering the 100 other projects in line and the fact that there’s nothing really wrong with it as is, we won’t be bringing that dream to life any time soon, so I recently painted it to see for the interim. New paint coupled with the fireplace screen swap has this side of the room looking fresh.

The color is Behr Potting Soil. White paint was the default, a pinkish tan to blend with the rocks was considered, but I ended up going dark last minute. Not sure if it’s the right move, but the dark color brings some heft to this large room, highlights the only tall ceilings in the house (so sunken!), makes my orange crap really pop, and helps me visualize dark wood over there. I’m proud/embarrassed to say that I painted the whole thing with two $3 sample jars of paint. The color is somewhere between charcoal and dark brown, the two colors I couldn’t decide between…so basically a cop out. It turns a little olive under the fireplace ceiling light so that’s kind of weird/delightful. If nothing else, I improved upon the shelf styling, which has been an ongoing lesson in scale and color next to that giant fireplace! And we upgraded knobs to these sweet things, relocating them to the top. Things used to look like this: