One Room Snack Challenge: How I transformed my thrifted West Elm Hamilton leather sofa

Let's be real. The title of this post is very specific. My week was not. It's mid week 4 and I have been hopping around like a fish out of water trying to figure out what to tackle while I wait on the rest of my pencil reed to arrive. Originally I thought I would start on the pencil reed coffee table, but because I was on a crutch all week, moving that beast out into the yard on my own to paint was out of the question. So I decided to paint my couch using Angelus Leather paint, a task I thought was going to be clean cut. I was soooooo incredible wrong.

I will say, thank God Joann's was having a sale on this stuff, because I wasted a lot of time (and money) having to go back and buy more paint to come up with warm enough olive green that didn't shift into the 1970s pea green. Needless to say, it took me painting the entire couch to realize the green had way too much blue in it for my tastes.

That being said, and before I get too far ahead of myself here, let's go over the numbers for this project (keep in mind you will spend about half of what I did on this thing if you learn from my color mixing mistakes). This also coverage for an 84" long leather sofa.

The Ingredients

1 Pack of sponge brushes $2

5 ounce bottle of Angelus Deglazer $5

1 40z bottle of Angelus Light Green $7

1 40z bottle of Angelus Black $7 (I tried flat and regular and the flat was too flat)

1 4oz bottle of Angelus Cream $7

1 40z bottle of Angelus Green $7

1 plastic cup

1 plastic spoon

Let's Go to Work

First, I started off with avocado. Like I stated the green was too yellow and had more pea vibes than olive vibes (but Andia, why didn't you just get olive? Because Joann's wasn't selling that color. Next question.) I tried desaturating the avocado with cream then darkening the new hue with black. Still not right. I added the green to it and that's when too much blue entered the mix. And on top of that I had run out of avocado trying to get the color just right.

The first coat came back with too much blue undertone

I decided to paint the whole couch to see if that would convince me of something different. WRONG.

I shamefully made my way back to Joann's only to discover I had bought up all of the avocado on the previous trip. I decided to get the color I thought wouldn't work: the limey light green. I mixed it with the cream, the remnants avocado, and finally the black until I got the shade I was looking for. So for those who care to know what I SHOULD have done: I should have dumped all of the avocado into the cup and then slowly mixed colors in till I landed on a shade I liked. Instead I used up half of a bottle mixing 5 different colors separately and ended up not having enough to use on the entire couch. The second time around I was able to use 3/4 of the Light Green, 1/4 of the Cream and 1/2 the Black to get my tones nearly there. That would have saved me 4 bottles! But hey just under $50 to updo a couch is not bad.

With week 5 right on my tail, I needed to kick it into high gear to get this thing finished and dried before my husband threw a fit that there was nowhere left to sit. I know it doesn't look different in this photo, but trust me it is more of a dark army green now which I can live with until I can afford a sofa in olive green that my kids can actually jump on and my husband can actually relax on and that doesn't take up the entire SF of our living room. Will I have a reveal to show by the start of week 5 of the One Room Challenge???? Stay tuned for this nail biting conclusion!