Almost 4 years later - finally painting now!

What a geek I am - I'm so excited that we'll finally have some COLOR on our walls other than the cream color that's been in every room since we moved in! We went to Home Depot yesterday and got a whole bunch of Behr paint book samples and I can't wait to narrow down the choices and get to the paintin! We're planning on doing the living room, hallway, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. There are so many beautiful colors to pick from - but we've narrowed to down to 3 or 4 colors and just have to get some real paint samples now. We're hoping to start next month, but in the meantime I can't pry myself away from behr.com since they have this interactive color sampling feature where you can see what each color looks like in different rooms!! Hooray!!! I'll def. have to post some before and after pictures once everything is done!! I can't wait!!!

How exciting!!

We used Behr exclusively in our house - they have some beautiful colors. We loved playing with the workbook online!

Have fun!

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Posted by cloddy

I know exactly what you mean. I get so carried away choosing colors. I take forever to decide. I'm very neurotic. I have to hang the color chips on the wall and stare at them at different times of the day in different light for weeks before i settle. We've been very slow too. We only did one room the first year, it took so much out of us we waited to do a second until just a couple of months ago. But, now i've been bit by the bug and I want to do the whole rest of the first floor soon. The house was all white when we moved in which was good because we could take our time. Good luck. have fun and share your befores and afters. Here's dining room. I'm at work so I don't have a before here.

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great color - what is the name??

great color - what is the name??

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Oh, thanks! It's definitely Behr. I can't remember the name, but I'll check for you when I get home. It had a really cheesy name. I think it had the word Mermaid in the name. but, I don't know if that was the wall color or the ceiling color. I'll let you know.

Karissa, it's hard to pick one color for each room when they're all so pretty! Here's what we have so far:

For the living room we want a neutral beige, so far we have Haze (my favorite so far!) Navajo White, Pariaian Beige, and another one that I can't rememebr the name...

Hallway is undecided right now - not sure if we want to do the same color as the living room, or maybe the kitchen, since it leads into that room.

Kitchen we want a warm rosy color, everything is very light with the tile floor and one wall of the room as cabinets, so I want to warm it up a bit Desert Rose is the favorite right now for that room.

Bathroom will be peachy/beige - Cozy Blanket, Warm Apricot are the two we were looking at.

Bedroom will be a muted blue/slate color. Nothing too dark since it's small, but soemthing to color the room up a bit. Calming Space, Eastern Bluebird and something Denim are the favorites so far.

I'll see if I can post color links - they're all so nice!

Okay, lets see if this works and I'll link the rest if it does
Living room: Parisian Taupe

rats! well, they're pretty anyway. I'll have to take pics once we start painting instead

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Posted by cloddy

I know exactly what you mean. I get so carried away choosing colors. I take forever to decide. I'm very neurotic. I have to hang the color chips on the wall and stare at them at different times of the day in different light for weeks before i settle. We've been very slow too. We only did one room the first year, it took so much out of us we waited to do a second until just a couple of months ago. But, now i've been bit by the bug and I want to do the whole rest of the first floor soon. The house was all white when we moved in which was good because we could take our time. Good luck. have fun and share your befores and afters. Here's dining room. I'm at work so I don't have a before here.

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the toile looks great! where did you get the curtains!?

Thats really exciting, we used behr in every room we painted so far except the living room. Benjamin moore was recommend to us so we tried that, not sure it was worth the extra $11 a gallon. I love painting! DH says it seems as if I have every Behr paint chip they make (I told him hes wrong I dont have any of the purples or pinks)

This is what I have learned with painting:
Painting molding stinks stinks stinks. Our previous homeowners had gorgeous molding which they painted marroon! Well after 8 months of living with it we couldnt take it any longer so we painted it white, and painted and painted for a week. 3 coats later it looks great! Hi gloss looks really nice on molding and is easy to clean mudy paw prints off of! Yet not as easy to work with.

Blue painters tape is your friend! just pull it off slowly!

Yellow always comes out brighter than you thought! (home depot has a GREAT return policy)

Always keep a wet paper towel handy, especially if you have wood floors or are prone to accidents!

Puppies get very jealous when you are spending more time painted than playing with them! I cant tell you home often Lucy has had her nose, tail, ear, side painted! We have now learned to get her a new rawhide bone when we are painting that will keep her busy for hours. (aka out of the paint buckets)

And stay away from the color warm terracotta we used that and it came out looking like a carribean cabana! So that led us to another weekend of repainting!

Splurge on the good brushes and rollers especially in important rooms! The cheaper ones either leave fuzzys behind or done clean well. Its worth the extra money (we use Purdy)

THose funky edger tools usually dont work too well! DH bought one for the ceiling works okay but I still have to go over and do it again! And it has little rollers on the top that sometimes will get paint on them and leave little marks on the ceiling!

Have fun!

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Posted by Kelly9904

This is what I have learned with painting:
Painting molding stinks stinks stinks. Our previous homeowners had gorgeous molding which they painted marroon! Well after 8 months of living with it we couldnt take it any longer so we painted it white, and painted and painted for a week. 3 coats later it looks great! Hi gloss looks really nice on molding and is easy to clean mudy paw prints off of! Yet not as easy to work with.

Blue painters tape is your friend! just pull it off slowly!

Yellow always comes out brighter than you thought! (home depot has a GREAT return policy)

Always keep a wet paper towel handy, especially if you have wood floors or are prone to accidents!

Puppies get very jealous when you are spending more time painted than playing with them! I cant tell you home often Lucy has had her nose, tail, ear, side painted! We have now learned to get her a new rawhide bone when we are painting that will keep her busy for hours. (aka out of the paint buckets)

And stay away from the color warm terracotta we used that and it came out looking like a carribean cabana! So that led us to another weekend of repainting!

Splurge on the good brushes and rollers especially in important rooms! The cheaper ones either leave fuzzys behind or done clean well. Its worth the extra money (we use Purdy)

THose funky edger tools usually dont work too well! DH bought one for the ceiling works okay but I still have to go over and do it again! And it has little rollers on the top that sometimes will get paint on them and leave little marks on the ceiling!

Have fun!

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GREAT ADVICE- I absolutely agree with everything you said and would echo all of it!

Kelly - this is SO helpful - thanks so much for your post! We have a bunch of smaller paintbrushes that DH got from Home Depot as part of a set a while ago - so we just have to get the rollers, painters tape, and of course, those wonderful paint trays too :) I remember reading a post a while ago about painters tape pulling up dried paint though - are there brands that you can recommend that might not do this?

And thanks for the pets tip too! I've also been thinking about that, and because he is still a curious puppy, Golem will be in his crate or sequestered to the kitchen during the painting. He wants to check evrything out when it's new - people, smells, clothes, shoes, etc. you name it, he needs to sniff it at least 20 times first!

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Posted by Preshy7

the toile looks great! where did you get the curtains!?

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Thanks! The whole set was at Target for a while, but I think it's gone now. The last time I checked they had switched to a red one. It was Wavery Wellington Toile. There is still a lot of it on ebay, which I check every once in a while because I want to have a back-up tablecloth now that the stuff is discontinued.

ooh, thanks for that Juliet! That's good to know for the final color cut! I'mleaning more towards haze though - I want a darker beige on the wall so everything kinda stands out. Our living room is really open too, so I'd like a darker color on the walls.

Helena- we've been playing with a lot of Behr colors too! I had sooooo many. The other night I cut out the ones I liked and taped them onto sheets of paper, one for each room. That's helped me narrow it down a little. We aren't even in our house yet and DH thinks I am obsessed (which I am! )

Have fun!