Makeover for my armoire – Choosing Color

What is it about the New Year that makes us want to do makeovers – ourselves, our homes, for our clients, etc?? I have a desire to just blow everything up at my house and start over. However, that’s not really in the cards for the moment. So, I’ll be focusing on smaller items – or maybe not so much small…

Above is my dining area (photo taken before I put away the Christmas decorations). As you can see, it’s kind of country rustic. The hearth is covered with stones collected on Duxbury Beach. My armoire was from my parents house and used to house their television set.

Speaking of makeovers, my Dad reconfigured this cabinet many years ago so that the upper doors could pocket into the cabinet when open, revealing the tv set and hiding the doors. Pretty cleaver guy was my Daddy! I might also point out he made the Grandfather clock on the right and designed and built the entire kitchen on his own. Plus he added the ceiling beams. He was good that way! I made the window treatments. Anyway, back to my cabinet.

I’m thinking of painting it – using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I was inspired by a client who painted their large wall unit as part of their family room/home office makeover that I’m working on.

This was the original cabinet configuration and finish:

And repainted in Annie Sloane Chalk Paint, Chateau Gray, which is really a green color, plus antiqued with a finishing wax. Looks great, doesn’t it? The entire cabinet has been painted and we broke up the configuration so that the center section is in one part of the room and the two end sections (minus doors) are in another part of the room flanked by the little curved corner display shelves.

So, back to my cabinet.

Here is context for the space. This table view below (photo by Michael J. Lee Photography)  was taken when standing next to the left of hearth/armoire. I was standing behind the table when I took the photo the armoire – it’s very close quarters. Oh, and the armoire now houses my china, silver and other similar items.

The photo below, also shot by Michael, shows my little painted green desk (refinished by my Dad when I was in elementary school for my bedroom) is directly to the right of the armoire (you can see it in far right side of the armoire photo nearly hidden behind the pile of books).

In other words, the painted desk and armoire are right next to each other as you can see in this un-styled scouting shot that Michael took. You can see all the final photos of my Nook Cottage here.

And for a final bit of context, the dining table without the table cloth (also an un-styled scouting shot by Michael).

So… what color to paint it? There are a lot of choices and they can be mixed for a custom color:

Since I tend to love green, my first thought was the Chateau Gray, which I mocked up:

I also looked at French Linen which I thought might be neutral and work well with the beach rock hearth:

Here are examples of French Linen finishes:

And finally, I looked at Graphite, which is not quite fully black.

My concern with black is that it’s such a large piece, it might overwhelm the space. It’s always important to consider the whole space when making a change like this – not just the item itself. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make – only thinking about each item on its own, not how it relates to the rest of the space. The actual cabinet would be darker than this as I needed to reduce the opaqueness of the color in order to see the cabinet form underneath.

I also looked at similarly painted cabinets:

This one below, painted in Graphite, concerns me as it look more blue than black which I would not want.

I am leaning towards the black with a light amount of antiquing,  as I think any other color would conflict with all the other colors I have going. By the way, I had a similar debate with myself back in 2009 when I repainted my kitchen cabinets and you can see the final outcome here.

What do you think?