decorating accomplishments and not-so-great ideas

Since many of us are setting up homes or apartments I thought it would be fun to share some of our 'wow, this looks great' ideas as well as those 'Holy Moly Why did I do that' attempts.

-My 'Why On Earth Did I Do This' moment was the green color I chose for my condo's living room/dinning room. I wanted a light sage green w/white trim BUT I ended-up with Mint! While many people said they liked it 'Yuck' was all I ever said and thought.
Lesson I learned: by 1 qt. a the colors you like and try them BEFORE you paint. Also, look at the dried color in the daytime and nighttime to make sure you really like the color.

My 'I really like this' was my recent bedroom painting. We used a suede effect paint and while it is subtle it really adds some nice texture to the room. It was A LOT of work, but worth it in the end.
I also sponged painted a bathroom once and really loved the results.

LOL! I can relate to the what-was-I-thinking-when-I-chose-this-color feeling, only I did it with PINK.

I was looking for a muted rose-ish, mauve-ish, greyish pink...if you can visualize that. I ended up with bubblegum pink. UGH!!!! Yes, I painted over it.

My in-laws recently re-did their living room and came home with paint samples, most of which were in that pinkish family. I warned them, they ignored me...and guess what? Yup, bubblegum pink.

Since you had success sponging in the past, maybe you can sponge over the mint to tone it down?

I've always wanted to try the suede effect...hmmm...maybe a project for this weekend!

The Mint is in our old place. Since we moved to the house I have linen white everwhere- not one touch of MINT
We painted the bedroom with Decorative Effects Chaps. It is a taupe- similar to light & sweet coffee. You need a few days to do it. First you roll on the first coat, and let it dry for 24 hours. Then you have to use 3' brushes and make 'X' brush strokes, in various sizes/widths/etc...and it takes FOREVER . But in the end you don't see any X marks, just the texture. It has a rough surface, not a flat paint surface.

We just did the Ralph Lauren Suede in our BR and it came out great!

We cheated though - on the second coat DH rolled on the paint and I came behind him and did the X'ing. I am not sure if it looks the way it's supposed to, but it looks really pretty

THis is a topic near and dear to my heart! Michele, I know how much you hated that mint color. My aunt recently tried for a light sage color in her dining room and guess what? Mint. LOL! You really cannot do a 'light sage'...sage is one of those colors that if you're going to commit to it, you might as well go with a true sage. Anyway, I am determined to avoid any painting nightmares, so *careful* planning has gone into everything we are now deciding upon for the house.

We just bought our 'practice' paint yesterday afternoon. For the den, we are going with a satin finish light mocha. I wanted a warm color, since our sofas are a dark brownish/greenish color, and the satin finish is *necessary* with our little man in the house. I plan to use accent colors of brown, rust, pumpkin and sage. Picture this as an area rug, with these accent pillows:





I am working hard to make the whole house have a reasonable 'flow' in terms of color and feel. We are thinking of painting the kitchen an even lighter shade of the mocha from the den, since they are adjoining rooms. The color on the card is called Early Sunset. The cabinets will probably be maple wood w/toffee finish and pewter draw/door pulls.
Here's a pic - we're using a combination of the squiggly one, and the simple round knob.


We're painting our bedroom a Golden Straw color by Benjamin Moore...this is our bedding, and our furniture is solid pine with swirling wrought iron accents that coordinate nicely with the golden swirls in the bedding.


I really wanted to do a glazing technique on the walls w/rag rolling, but DH does not like the idea. However, I am intrigued by the 'suede' effect b/c I really wasn't envisioning a 'flat' color on our bedroom walls. I like the warmth and interest that textured paint gives, but I don't like the sponging thing. Do you need a special kind of paint for the suede effect?

You need a special paint for the seude. I got it at Lowe's and it is called Decorative Effects. It is $30 per gallon, which was a bit high, but I really love the effect. And we could have only used 3 gallons instead of the 4 we purchased (we followed the darn directions about coverage amounts) so I suggest not buying it all at once and saving yourself some $$ if you can.

My friend Barbara has been doing the ragging/sponge stuff and she just got a special roller, instead of doing the actually sponges/rags. Looks really nice.

What is up with the MINT paint. I just wish the color chips were the REAL color of the paint! So far, this Decorative Effects was very close to the chip, but I only used one of the colors so not sure.

I would say my not so great ideas is that I would never WALLPAPER!!! I took down a border in a bedroom one time that was was so friggin hard, I swore I'd never ever wallpaper. Friends of ours had a house that the previous owners were too lazy and painted OVER the wallpaper several times, so they wound up having to re-sheetrock the walls because there was no way that stuff was coming off!! I'd rather paint and paint and change it again before I would wallpaper, just because it isn't an easy task to get down. JMO. I like a painted wall even if it was white with accents of color in the decorating...

Claud, love the colors...

Claud: Love those drawer pulls!!

I wanted to change the hardware on my cabinets until i found out that the existing holes in my cabinets are about 1/4 too far apart for standard hardware!! ***? That is what ****s about living in an old house - everything needs to be custom made!!

We just spent the weekend finishing up our first few rooms. We did the bedroom, den and preped the livingroom and dining room.

The bedroom is a success - its that clear Pottery Barn Green. A designer friend of mine explained the green/sage delima to me. Green more than any other color is effected by the colors around it. So if you have a carpet with some yellow in it the green will appear more yellow etc.

The den is not such a success I was going for a warm beige but got a pinkish beige! There is not a lot of wall space in this room so we are living with it. But now I am afraid to pick the livingroom and dining room paint.

One thing I will never do again - there was wallpaper in the hallway. The paper stripped off easily enough but the paper backing was left on the wall. Our contractor said we could try Diff (a spray on scrape off method) or he could skim coat and sand the walls. Being overwhelmed by everything else that has to be done we chose to let him skim coat the walls. Well this took forever and cost a lot more than I wanted to spend on a hallway and the sanding caused a total dusty mess. The walls look like new but the $$ and mess were not worth it.

Next we move on to the office.

I had the same issue with the green (light sage vs. mint). We painted the living room and hallway - but the hallway was one shade darker than the living room. The living room looks fine because the color is so soft but I couldn't stand the mint in the hallway anymore so we recently painted the hall Sandy White. Also, two of the walls in the living room we painted with a sponge effect (3 different shades of green) and it looks great - a little like wallpaper but you can paint over it any time.

We absolutely love the light lavendar color in our bedroom - I freaked out while we were painting it because it didn't even look lavendar but now it looks great and we love it.

Another great project we did that dressed everything up was replace old doors with new solid Pine doors. We stained them and they look great - not an easy feat though. We also got brushed nickel hardware and it really pulls together the brushed stainless accents in the rest of the rooms.

I started to replace door knobs with an antique brass (not shiny at all) and that makes a huge difference also. I had to replace the lock on the front door, so I figured why not get a pretty one that I like instead of a plain door knob. (in antique brass)


inside doors:


I will try to replace one or two a month until I am done. It does add a nice touch

Michele, those are very pretty!

We just changed the locks on our house, too. I wanted the polished brass for the front door, to match our engraved door knocker. But, I wanted something different, so we chose the Baldwin egg shaped knob and a double cylinder deadbolt with a lifetime finish. I think they are pretty:


We also replaced the house numbers:


For the interior garage door, we chose the antique brass (not this one exactly, but very similar):


This weekend's paint test did not go well at all. Similar to Fran's dilemna with her den, our den color did not work well (thank goodness I knew to test it first b/c I would not live with this color!) My 'light mocha' came out like a light pink - YUCK! I would like a taupe color, but not too dark b/c I don't want to close the room in. It has one window and sliding doors to the yard, so it's got plenty of light...I just want to keep it that way.

The 'golden straw' in the bedroom is also too light and a bit too yellow for my taste. DH likes it, so I told him to use it for his office, but I refuse to sleep in a room that's too yellow. I want a warmish color - more golden/caramel/toffee. Sooo, back to the paint store we go. Ugh!

The worst is that with the textured finished you cannot test so you have to say a pray and just go with it. Oh, check out the Ventian Plaster paints (Lowe's has it). You might like it, even though it is tons of work. I am thinking of it for my the bottom 1/2 of my dinning room, then a chair rail, then a complimentary satin finish on the top 1/2 of the walls.
Love the egg shaped knobs. I saw those.

Im not sure but it seems that all the paint disasters have something to do with the paint looking lighter on the walls than on the chip. Im going paint shopping soon - so I have to remember to go dark. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Anyone have any suggestions for a brownish red?

Stef, you're right...I'm learning that myself. I originally picked paint chips that everyone said, 'Oh, that's too dark!' So, I changed everything to one shade lighter, and look at what happened!

Now I think I would have been just fine with the first (darker) colors I chose. We may try again with more colors tomorrow night, so I'll let you know if darker works better! Wish me luck!

Definitely a cost savings issue for me as well as a comfort level. To have our few main house painted would cost somewhere in the 500-1000 excluding the paint. That is just a waste of money since we are able bodied AND I dont feel comfortable having strangers in my house unless it can be avoided.

But if I knew of contractors that were reasonably priced and trusted - I would probably use them.