The wall color is Behr's Green Energy. I do love Behr paint. It's very thick, so it takes more than they say it will take (I used 1.5 gallons for this room), but the coverage is fantatic, the color selection is amazing, and the finish is nice. No, this isn't a Behr add, I have just had success with it in the three Behr products I've purchased. Back to Green Energy: it's green. No, not pastel green, not hunter green, not neon green, just green. I prefer it that way. It's green without yellow, or grellow. There's no blue in there (other than the yellow and blue combined to make this glorious color). Although we didn't take the bag as a color match, I'd say is perfect. Have you noticed that we like rich, saturated colors? As Tim says, if you're painting you'd might as well make it interesting. Visually another buyer would probably hate our house, but we'll paint when that time rolls around.
The bag has crisp white handles, perhaps a sign for decor to come in this room. It's also earthy, check out that leafy design, perhaps another nod to the future design. Tim doesn't want all of our rooms to be rich colors with white accents. It's possible this room will have light wood picture frames or mini cork boards to break up the walls. I've been busy working on design elements for the guest bedroom and rolling paint on these walls that I haven't really developed a concept for the decor here, but I do see a DIY wall art in my future.
Do you see the slight sheen on this wall below? That's because we used semi-gloss paint. We painted the kitchen ceiling flat when Alex replaced the light fixture and it's well, flat. Too flat. We used semi-gloss on our kitchen cabinets, kitchen walls, and dining room walls. I like the feel of semi-gloss. It's nice and smooth, plus it's great for cleaning! I wanted semi-gloss upstairs because I can picture Monkey or Sullivan getting something nasty on the walls or a DIY mishap occuring the craft room, so I think semi-gloss was the way to go. Plus, our hallway is either eggshell or flat and it feels like it needs lotion. It's not unlike petting a chalkboard. Ick. Who cares if I defy the conventional paint sheen strategies?!
For now, this room has random storage: Christmas, Halloween, luggage, ceiling fans (which need to be installed in both the spare room and the guest bedroom), and items we're toying with the idea of selling including a plush executive desk chair, light wood corner desk, and old school Nintendo games. The ceiling fans are projects for another day, the decor should/will live in the attic, and the luggage could remain (or find a new home under our bed if Tim would ever let me put the dang thing on risers!). If you're interested in the sale items, I know the seller and I bet she could give you a good deal.
Overall this project went swimmingly. Wait, did I just say that? I didn't realize just how long it would take to paint this room by myself. It is larger than the guest bedroom, but we cranked out the dining room in no time. That's right, WE did that. Oh yeah... painting by yourself takes twice as long because you're doing all of the rolling, cutting in, and taping alone. No pity party here. I just always have unrealistic expectations about the amount I will be able to accomplish on a particular project. For example, I had Tim remove all of the doors in the guest bedroom and spare bedroom because I thought surely I could do all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, errand-ing, taping, wall painting, door painting, and dog calming (Yeah, they were scared with the fireworks, so scared Sully made himself sick. Literally, sick.) by myself this weekend. To me, that list seemed pretty short, but in reality it took a while. Plus, I stopped and had lunch at Panera in between my shopping and erranding (dropping things off at Hamilton ReStore, quick trip to Pease, and to Michael's for sweet wall art that's coming in a couple of weeks).
Well, everything went well except the trim. It took us a solid month to even start adding trim to our dining room. Tim completed most of that project by himself. I researched this subject and came up with several lackluster ideas. Many recommended removing it, painting, and reinstalling. That sounded like a bad idea on warped trim from 1983. Next. Several suggested shoving a spatula (not the kind for grilled cheese, the kind for spackling) under the trim to press down the carpet. That sounds like a terrible idea. Maybe worse than the first. Who wants to paint a few inches at a time? Not me! Finally, a few lone sources suggested a piece of plexiglass under the trim. Okay, maybe. At least this way you could paint two feet at once.
We have old carpet in our upstairs that we don't really care about, so we decided to cut the carpet back, put some weights on it, paint the exposed trim, and press the carpet back down. We plan to replace the carpet after all of the upstairs paint is done anyway. Done. It wasn't really that hard, just annoying. I'm lying, I have no idea if it was hard to pull back all of the carpet because I sweetly asked the hubs to do it then helped him with the primer and paint. Did I mention that I'm clumsy? Yeah, ask my right pinky that got smashed in the car door by yours truly this weekend. I thought that me pulling back carpet to expose sharp tack strips might be a bad idea.
Okay, so trim is done. Fine. Now onto the walls. Again, clumsy me certainly doesn't have the skill to cut-in all of that trim by hand (I tried in the closet, it didn't look awesome), so I had to tape it. Now I tried a variety of strategies: Frog tape, Blue Painter's tape, let it dry completely, rip it off as soon as you set down the brush while the paint is still wet. No dice. It ended up looking like this:
Maybe you can't see the wiggly lines of crappy painting above the trim. Sigh. I can. And it drives me bonkers. One strategy that I don't hate is the Shur-Line Edge Like a Pro system. I use this for the ceiling. It looks mediocre, but definitely better than my tape system, especially with our textured/popcorn ceiling. Because the ceiling is textured, it does hide the fact that the Shur-Line doesn't get right next to the edge (there is a small, maybe 3 mm gap). Since we already painted the guest bedroom, but not the trim, I think I will try to tape the walls instead of taping the trim and see if that has a better outcome. Does anyone have strategies for painting trim?
I really like Behr paint too! :)
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