Paint by Numbers
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One of the top projects on my list ever since I bought my townhouse November 14 of last year (2003) was to paint the interior. The place was built in 1988 and other than one of the bedrooms and the downstairs bathroom I was not sure if any of it had ever been painted. The rest of the place was a very dingy, dirty white, and the garage was just drywall and had never been painted at all.
The budget was starting to look favorable for the project in August so I started measuring and calculating. A friend of a friend whose house I had visited had redone his interior and he recommended Behr paint from the Home Depot so I stopped by and picked up some color palettes. A couple of other friends had offered to help pick out colors but I basically just kept in mind what one of them said ("white is boring") and I decided go with a "colors of the day" theme. I wanted the kitchen and dining area to be a bright, sunny yellow for sunrise. I wanted the living room to be a warm green color to give the feeling of life. I decided the stairs and upper hallway should be a blue to represent going up into the afternoon sky. Then one of the bedrooms and the bathrooms were to be shades of reddish-orange for the evening sunset, and the master bedroom was to be a purple shade to represent the last twilight.
In all, I figured I would need 30 gallons for the primary surfaces and then additional for the trim. Labor Day weekend rolled around and I was ready with a 10% Lowe's coupon that I had gotten online (which Home Depot said they would accept). But I got even luckier as it turned out Home Depot was offering a $5 mail-in rebate on all gallon sizes of Behr paint purchased that weekend. Combine the two and what was normally $14 to $18 per gallon was only going to cost me $8 to $12 per gallon.
I decided to just buy entire gallons for each of the trim paint, as the discount and rebate made the gallons almost as cheap as the quarts. I ended up buying 35 gallons that weekend, and right away Monday morning I started on the garage. I had gotten 6 gallons of white for the garage. I forgot to take before pictures, but basically I had moved everything into the house or onto the patio and cleaned out a lot of cobwebs. You can see one of the unfinished spots back behind the water heater in one of the pictures. That is what the whole garage looked like before I started. This is what it looked like after two coats and after I had moved stuff back in.
Next was the kitchen and dining area, which took a lot of prep time. It probably took 3-4 times longer to tape the edges and drape plastic over the cabinets than it did to actually paint it.
For the kitchen and dining area I used 3 gallons of "Bicycle Yellow" being an avid cyclist I could not resist a color with bicycle in the name. I used a shade of gold for the trim. I was very happy with the results.
On the living room I forgot to take before pictures. The difficult part of the living room was that there had been a mirror over the fireplace that was stuck up with adhesive. I came home one day to find the mirror scattered all over the living room. I am glad I was not there when it happened. But the adhesive was still stuck in splotches on the wall, and it proved very hard to take off (if only it had stuck to the mirror as well). I will probably have to redo the wall above the mirror someday, but for now it is good enough. I bought 6 gallons of "Kiwi Splash" for the living room, with "Emerald Lake" for the trim. Kiwi is one of my favorite fruits and Emerald Lake reminded me of my vacation to Lake Tahoe this past summer (where there is a beautiful Emerald Bay). Here are some "in progress" pictures:
I was not as happy with the results in the living room as I had been in the kitchen. The finished living room seemed a little too "minty fresh" to me, as it reminded me of the color of mint flavored ice cream. I was not quite sure how to do the transition from the living room to the stairs and upstairs hall, either. The one wall just continues around the bedroom door so I originally went green all of the way (what's behind the green door?). Here are before pictures of the stairs and hall:
For the hall I got a color called "Utah Sky" (4 gallons) and a gallon of "Pale Sky" for the trim. I thought it would make an interesting reversal to have a lighter color for the trim as in the other rooms I had gone with a light primary color and a darker color for the trim. You can see the results of both the living room, stairs and hall in these next pictures.
For the master bedroom, I found a shade of lavender called "Innuendo". I could not resist that name. Here is the master bedroom in progress:
