What did I get myself into???

Step one: Prime! Guys, I really wanted to skip this step. I've painted plenty of rooms in my day and have never needed to prime before. This time, though, I'm going from blue to white, so I figured I'd better man up and prime. Good thing I did, because after primer coat #1 it was clear I needed to do a second coat. Bummerrrrr. 

Primer coat #1

Primer coat #2

I know you can't tell from these pictures, but there really is a big difference in the amount of blue poking through.

Did you notice the paint tests next to the window? When I went to the store to purchase the paint I had a pretty good idea in mind of how I wanted the final product. Then, when I saw the millions upon billions of shades of beige, I lost it. It was totally overwhelming and I didn't know how things would look in their space with their lighting and did I want "toasted mushroom" or "sandy something or other." Ultimately I bought (!!) two sample shades and threw them up on the wall. They looked terrible. In my brother's words, smeared diarrhea. I offer them for your judgement:

yuck.

So back to the store I went, this time with my Pinterest picture in hand, and came back with about ten paint chips. The one you see in the bottom left corner (Baja by Behr) was the winner. Much better.

My brother is in town for his annual summer visit so I enlisted his help in my project. He is still a college kid, though, which means I'm on my own til after he has his breakfast around noon or so. Because of this I assigned him the task to sprucing up the pantry. After I removed and washed all the shelving he sanded them down and gave them a fresh coat of paint.

 
aaand the room after paint coat #1:

lookin better already

Now that I'm getting some real work done I'm getting nervous. Will they hate it? What if it doesn't look nice? Will I finish in time? What did I get myself into?!?!$?!?!