Our Window Seat Journey

I am so excited to share this project we started a year ago. Call it a window seat, built-in bench, or banquette… what’s important is that it’s finally done! It’s been slow process finishing up the details, then I eventually came to the conclusion that I wasn’t in love with the color. This is the story of how our dining room went from moody green to a calming purple (and how we used an IKEA hack to make the bench).

Beadboard Accent Wall

Beadboards are fun, and even more so with benches! We glued and nailed them to the walls and caulked the pieces together before painting.

Built-in Bench with BESTA Cabinets

We used two 47″ cabinets and one 23″ cabinets with the Hanviken fronts. The 23″ cabinet was further cut down to fit the edge and we just left it open. The frame was built with 2x4s and leveled. The only tricky part was getting around the return vent, which we lined with aluminum tape before setting the cabinets on top. We made the frame deeper than the cabinets and topped it all with MDF boards.

The “Green Drama”

Oh my gosh, I just about drove myself crazy with the green sample paints. We have south-facing windows and get a lot of light, so any given color can look drastically different throughout the day. I initially picked G.I. Green by Benjamin Moore (far right on the first photo, background on the second photo), but decided that it was way too light and yellow in the direct sunlight. Then I looked at darker greens and started mixing them to my liking. Sadly, my local Sherwin-Williams told me they can’t just mix two paints together, so I went down the rabbit hole to customize Saguaro instead (formula below). Looking back, that was a poor choice as I was going back and forth with the “a little less saturated” and “a little cooler” requests and ultimately didn’t get the exact shade I wanted.

ALSO, a couple things about the sheens: I got my usual flat for the walls and tried eggshell for the trim for the first time. The flat was pretty shiny and didn’t think too much of it since it was my first time using SW SuperPaint. Weirdly enough, the new color I have now is a true flat despite being the same paint. I’m not sure why they were so different. As for the eggshell for trim, I hated it. It felt really rough compared to the satin I had before. I tried it because I like things as matte as possible, but you really do need at least a satin.

REVEAL 1: The Green Dining Room

I did love the green for a long time. It did bother me here and there because it was more saturated than I would’ve liked and I found myself fine tuning the color on photos. Painting itself is tiring per usual so there remained many spots on the ceiling that needed touching up. We also can’t ignore the fact that this was yet another shade of green in our home. 50 shades of green, anyone?

As for the bench, I avoided photographing it for the longest time because it wasn’t completely finished. We eventually put in a shoe trim to match the rest of the room and to bridge the gap between the baseboard and the floor. I finally ordered a cushion too, yay!!

REVEAL 2: The Purple Dining Room

So here it is in all its glory! I’ve always loved purple and found myself embracing it more and more lately. This is Autumn Orchid by Sherwin Williams, the perfect lavender with the right amount of warmth. Other strong contenders were Renwick Heather (darker), Ash Violet (cooler), and Gentle Grape (cooler and saturated). Flat for walls and ceiling. Satin for trim, door, bench, and beadboard. Unlike the green, I enjoy every iteration of the Autumn Orchid as it changes throughout the day.

One major difference this time around was using a paint sprayer instead of rolling. The actual painting went a lot faster but there is a lot of prep work involved before and in between. I didn’t mind setting up, but what really got to me was when I switched from satin to flat and the plastic would not stay over the painted areas. If you’re painting everything the same sheen, this would be a non-issue. Spraying isolated rooms would be much more manageable too, rather than a room in the center of the house (like our dining room lol). Oh, and you need the whole shebang with respirators and coveralls to protect yourself, of course.

If I had to choose? Now that I’ve had time to recover, I think I would choose spraying. It gives an incredibly smooth finish (if the sprayer is functioning correctly), it’s less physically demanding, and overall goes a lot faster.