...because home doesn't happen overnight.

Truth: I repainted the mudroom…or dining room…or laundry room. Whatever you want to call it. Here it is back before we moved in just as HH was finishing up the tile…

We painted it Benjamin Moore’s Camouflage although I wouldn’t use my picture as a good inspiration image of the paint color. We had the BM swatch color-matched at Home Depot in Behr’s primer + paint. Most times, I don’t have any problems with getting paint color-matched and switching from one brand to another. But this color was a rare exception. The color-matched version is browner/khaki-er than the true BM color. I even went as far as to get a BM sample mixed for comparison and there was a noticeable difference. The real Camouflage is a bit greener and grayer and less brown. I’m not sure if the mix up was a brand-to-brand problem or a user error in Home Depot’s paint department. There were times of the day when I thought I liked the color but then, other times, it would take on the safari khaki color and I couldn’t even look at it.

When I told HH I wasn’t happy with the color, you can imagine his reaction. “So, take the Behr paint back and put in a complaint for a redo/refund.” But I’m not one for confrontation. That was nearly a year ago. I should note here that this is also the same color we originally painted the nursery {before we knew if we were having a boy or a girl} and I ended up repainting that room too.

I finally came to terms with the color this past weekend and decided to stop fretting over it and just repaint. Here’s the untouched and unedited {and quite unfinished and messy!} laundry nook before in BM Camouflage…{ugh, it clashed with the tile!}

And here’s the repainted {but still untouched and unedited so you get a good look at the true paint color} nook in BM Halo…

Ahhh. SO MUCH BETTER. In case you’re wondering, I had the color mixed in BM paint. No color-matching. I think I’m scared. I decided I’d rather spend the extra money and know I’m getting the true color.

Here are a few more unedited pics of the freshly repainted room {still need to paint the french doors just like I need to in the kitchen! And please don’t pay much attention to the furnishings or lack there of. Other than finishes + paint + wardrobes + cabinets, this room hasn’t been touched.}…

It took me an entire day and one coat of ~½ gallon of BM Aura paint with lots of breaks thrown in to feed/entertain/take care of the kids. There really wasn’t that much wall space, that’s just how slow I am. Ideally, I would have taken down the cabinets in the laundry nook and detached/pulled out the wardrobes to paint behind them but HH is away and I AM ONLY ONE PERSON. My solution was to paint the little spaces as bet I could with a trim brush and small foam roller. It was tedious but turned out just fine. You would never know the walls were painted after the cabinets and wardrobes were installed. I also skipped the painter’s tape and cut everything in by hand. I think I’m better at it that way.

All of this to get to today’s topic: repainting. Why do we have such a hard time coming to terms with this home improvement project? In the scheme of things, it’s really not that difficult or expensive to repaint a room if we’re not satisfied with the color. And it certainly doesn’t take very long to do. Maybe our ego doesn’t like us to admit it when we’ve chosen a ‘wrong’ color. Maybe we don’t want to waste all that time/money/paint we put in the first go around that we think we should live with it. But if we don’t like it or it’s not working, should we live with it? I don’t think so.

Paint is one the easiest and least expensive ways to transform a room. So, you don’t like your {insert name of room here}’s wall color? Then accept the fact that it isn’t working, look for another color and repaint. Don’t worry about it. I think living with a color that isn’t working/you hate takes way more energy than actually repainting. And it can make all the difference between having a room you dislike and having a room you love.

We’re human. We’re allowed to mess up. We’re supposed to mess up. It’s how we learn. How we deal with mistakes in life and in home improvement makes us who we are. So, call out your mistakes – or whatever else isn’t working! – and address them instead of living with them and letting them eat away at your conscience. My mind is a lot lighter today.

So what d’ya say? Is there a room or, god forbid!, roomin your house that just isn’t/aren’t working for you in the paint department, if ya know what I mean? The first step is admitting it.

Hi, I’m Dana. I didn’t like the paint color in my mudroom so I repainted it. Now I love it! Next up? My bedroom.

Really. There are worse things.

images: Dana Miller for House*Tweaking

 

 

64 Comments

05.November.2012

I’m going through this right now! When we first bought our house 3+ years ago I decided that “my” room would be orange. ORANGE. (Olympic Fuzzy Navel) It just makes the room messy and out of place. But I feel guilty – and I don’t know why. But now I’m searching for the perfect gray-green for that room that I think will fit in better in our house. I about lost my mind last night when my husband said, “Let’s go to Lowe’s together and really think about what color we want that room to be” Ha!

05.November.2012

Such a refreshing post, and such timing! I just finished my basement. I love industrial design and I’m very neutral with my color choices, and love Candace Olsen designs as an example… but my passion is adding old blueprints, and renderings on black backgrounds, and vintage poster art. I thought adding one accent wall in a slate-grey-barely-blue would be ok. I am still trying to reconcile this color…and regret it every time I walk past it. I can’t decide whether I take it back and add color to the existing “oops” color (too blue, wanted more grey) or whether I just buy a new color altogether. In your laundry room, I see the change in the color and you’re right, the new color blends much better with the floor even though it is a subtle change—great choice and terrific recovery! I’m trying to be more brave and I envy the bloggers who know how to blend opposite colors on the spectrum…but I figure there is a place for me in blogging land in my world of browns, tans, blacks and whites too. :)

Your house and your style is beautiful..keep up the great work!

05.November.2012

I totally understand ! In my former apartment, I painted the hallway a color I loved then I painted all my doors/trims/baseboards white, and then the hallway was ugly … I waited a few years to repaint though, cause it was a bit of money and, well, it was the hallway ! We shall live and learn, I guess + I think it’s quite hard to pick the right color before the furniture is in, actually. We get a better idea of the whole thing and what will be best in what room. Good job by the way ! Take care !

05.November.2012

Only my entire downstairs! When we bought our home last year I had a window of about a week where the new house would be relatively empty. I knew I wanted a light gray throughout the entire downstairs since it was pretty open. I hate it so bad! The gray ended up looking lavender and I’ve been living with it since last October. Don’t get me started on the “baby poop orange” paint that is on my stairway/upstairs hallway that the previous owners thought was such a great color they painted the entire inside, (up and downstairs). I have finally found my perfect color of gray, (BM’s Moonshine), I just need to get my behind in gear and get ‘er done.

05.November.2012

I am totally in the repaint-aholic club. I think it takes a lot of guts to admit that the color is just not working and to do something about it. I had an antique red painted living room in my last house. It was great. Everyone loved it. So I got the exact same paint color for my “new” house. Ugh. I hate it. I can’t wait to paint over it. (I’m dragging my feet, because seriously, who wants to paint over red.)
I do agree your second paint color is much better with the tile. Good choice!

05.November.2012

I had the same problem with color matching Sherwin Williams to a Behr paint. Not sure if he was correct, but the guy at the Home Depot paint department told me that Behr typically has more clay in the paint and it can change the color if you are color matching.

Yes! We made a terrible paint choice in our living room (http://middleclassmodern.blogspot.com/2012/09/making-mistakes.html) and tried to live with it. Repainting it completely changed the whole vibe of the room, and now I’m happy when I look at it.

I love the subtle difference it’s made in your hardworking laundry/mud/craft/dining room.

05.November.2012

Painting has been my nemesis this month. I did decided to bite the bullet and not color-match paint to another brand. So, I have been happy with my color choices. But, I painted the kitchen, hall and bath in preparation for new hardwood floors to be installed. When the installer showed up he said we should level the floors. So after he did that, I now have to repaint part of the kitchen and hallway because of the damage. Not to mention the dust is EVERYWHERE despite masking the rooms off. I will be investing in a tack cloth company soon. But like you said, there are worse things.

05.November.2012

I like the new color too- the before was very much like a pair of pants!

It’s hard to think about the effort involved in re-painting especially when it involves moving furniture, and like you said doing it alone sucks. My husband refuses to indulge my repainting mania by doing something like helping. But sometimes it has to be re-done, like in the case of our bathroom where I am 80% sure that mold is growing in the tiny tiny cracks. But that’ll be a Thanksgiving or Christmas break project for sure.

05.November.2012

Our bedroom. It’s a grey but has a purple undertone. I didn’t realize it when I painted the swatch because the existing lighter grey also had purple but we were going darker and it looked like it canceled it out. But it doesn’t and it drives me crazy. I love the color at night but not in the bright daylight. I want to repaint it but we have vaulted ceilings and it just seems like such a pain.

In general, I don’t color match. I have had much better luck with coverage and color using Sherwin Williams paint and vastly prefer it to all others, even Benjamin Moore. So I always just pick a SW color and go with it.

05.November.2012

Since I rent my house, I painted my bedroom (which I really like), but have kept the same khaki color everywhere else. I’m not in love with it, but I guess you work with what you got it. It’s definitely not terrible so I guess it could be much worse! So glad you were able to make a change and now you love it!

05.November.2012

I can’t stand our living room color, but only at night. During the day it’s a beautiful soft gray/green that provides a great neutral backdrop for the floors and furniture. But at night it turns into a garish apple green that hurts my eyes. I would repaint it in a heartbeat but it extends throughout most of our first floor and would require special equipment that I don’t have. And I’d be back at square one choosing a color. I tried no less than 10 colors on the wall before settling for the Jekyl/Hyde green we have. Might be time to call in the pros.

I hate the color in our half bathroom. It’s yellow. Very yellow. Blindingly yellow. I want to paint it and I have an idea in mind, but I also want to change out the light fixture (it’s one of those builder’s grade brass exposed bulb fixtures) and the towel bar and toilet paper holder, so I need to find what I want first so I can figure out if I’m going to need to do some wall patching before painting.

05.November.2012

My name is Kristen and I hate the paint color in BOTH of my bathrooms – its the same color! We have a very small, open floor plan house, so I wanted to make the bathrooms the same color so that everything didn’t feel so chopped up. The “paint” the builder used was ridiculous – watered down and barely one coat. In other rooms, we had basically treated that paint like the printer (it was a light beige) and the paint colors weren’t affected at all. Well, not true at all in the bathrooms! They are both a rather loud tropical blue. In the guest room bathroom, I thought well, I can live with it and bought a cool shower curtain and we used a few modern decals on the walls. It looks okay. Not what I wanted, but okay I guess? Oh but our master bathroom is a travesty. My sweet, sweet husband painted it for me as a surprise when I was stuck at work (it has 2 levels of vaulted ceilings and 2 closets). It’s awful. Ironically, we painted the closets a lighter blue to contrast, and that blue is perfect. We recently found an awesome handyman who is a great painter and cheap, cheap, cheap – so maybe I’ll have him paint the bathrooms? I don’t know…I’m so annoyed/exhausted by the mess, and I would rather pay him for projects that really need to be done (we just re-did the kitchen), so, yeah. Right back to where I started! :)

05.November.2012

I definitely struggle with changing paint colors! I repainted our living room early in 2011 and I still go back and forth on if it’s the right choice (I’m pretty sure it’s not). I’m also fairly certain that our dining room needs to be repainted but nervous to pick a new color.

Another confession – I’m a ::insert random tan/beige shade:: -aholic. Every color I ever choose is just another variation of tan.

05.November.2012

I’m having color regret on the entire upstairs that we are currently (as I type) paying someone to paint. I’m going to live with it for a while and make sure I am really dissatisfied before I take any action. Mostly because I HATE PAINTING.

05.November.2012

We’ll be putting our house on the market, and the bedrooms need freshening. We’re talking a basic creamy white here, nothing fancy. But I am not a minimalist. :( I’m paralyzed by the prospect of removing pictures from walls, clearing surfaces, shoving furniture to the middle of the room, rolling up or covering rugs, etc. The solution is probably just to start, then take one step at a time instead of being frozen by what feels like the overwhelming size of the job, right?

05.November.2012

I work in a BM store and I can tell you many colour matching horror stories…. If you like the BM chip, it is not worth it to try and match it….

That said, it is just paint. It is an easy change and I am always telling customers to relax and enjoy the process ~ the colour in your home should not make you angry. If it is not making you happy, change it. There is a surprising amount of therapy involved with working in a paint store. :) Take the chip home and put it on the wall for a few days to see how it looks during different times of the day. NEVER pick your colour in the store without taking the chip or a sample home first!

I do love the subtle change in colour! It looks very pretty…

05.November.2012

I feel your pain! My husband and I repainted our dining room 3 times all in the course of 2 days! It was “Restrained Gold” (SW I think) when we moved in. A fine color but I wanted something other than yellow. After a year of living with it that color we decided to tackle repainting. Our first choice was “Covington Blue” by BM. The kitchen is “Waterbury Green” and CB is two shades lighter. WRONGO. It turned day-glo turquoise in that room. Something about the daylight and the color of the wood floor. So so bad. So the next day we painted it “Palladian Blue”. A beautiful BM shade that I’ve seen in many rooms online. Unfortunately it looked like someone smeared toothpaste on my walls. So ugly. It turns out blue was not the shade for that room. We landed on “Mountain Lane” by BM. Amazing green. So lovely.

Thankfully my husband is a good sport when it comes to painting. He rolls, I do the cutting in (by hand.) But after that room we are a little gun-shy picking out colors for our next project!

05.November.2012

No worries – want a bigger confession? I’ve painted one wall in my home 5 times. 5 times! Why!? Well, You never really know how light is going affect the color. First I wanted grey – found that the grey I chose came off very lavander once it was on the walls, then went really dark grey, then found a medium grey I liked better and THEN finally decided I liked a creamy white. I’m a professional Interior Designer by day. Go figure.

Paint happens.

05.November.2012

I should also mention that I’ve only lived in my home for 2.5 years.

05.November.2012

I love Camouflage – my parent’s house is that colour and I love it. The thing I don’t understand is how you can paint a room while your kids are home with you. I have two kids – 3&5 – and there is NO WAY I could paint a whole room during daylight/waking hours with them hanging around (my husband travels for work too). Kudos to you, kudos to your kids!

05.November.2012

I know why I haven’t repainted my basement. There isn’t a ton of natural light down there, and while I am really not in love with the paint I picked out at random (and in a hurry) as we were moving into our house over two years ago, it isn’t terrible… the thing that stalls me has more to do with a complete lack of knowing WHAT to paint it instead. Better the devil you know?

05.November.2012

I’ve been going through the same thing in my bedroom and bathroom. We had saved up to have them professionally painted because our walls are so tall. I instantly hated the bathroom color choice (it looked smurf blue!) and should have told the painter to stop before he finished the first wall…but I didn’t want to be annoying and let him finish. Fast forward two years and I finally sucked it up and repainted it myself in a pretty pale grey. So much better! The bedroom is another story – still haven’t built up enough nerve to admit defeat and break out the ladder.

Good luck with your room repainting! Can’t wait to see the outcome :)

05.November.2012

Ha, I totally painted my guest bath last year the week before company was coming…I hated & repainted it with in 24 hours…I was down to the last day before family was visiting for Christmas. But I could NOT have lived with the bad paint choice I had made. Yikes! I am crazy like that and my Hubs thinks I am crazy!

05.November.2012

Haha…I have painted one accent wall in our living room three times…all slightly different versions of the same taupe….the first was too green, second too purple but I finally have it perfect! I’m just grateful my hubby is a sweetheart and doesn’t complain when I’m having one of these moments! Quick question Dana…why do you have most of your cabinets installed slightly off the walls…this surprised me in your kitchen and now I notice it in your mushroom as well…just preference or is there some trick I don’t know about?!?! P.S. love your blog!

05.November.2012

Great post. If it makes you feel any better, I have repainted our living/dining room THREE times in 4 years. We always wanted a neutral color, but just couldn’t seem to get it right. The first color was Valspar’s Betsy’s Linen. Yuck. Stike 1. It looked like white paint stained with nicotene. We lived with it for a year, but I hated it. The second was Behr’s Sail Cloth, a nice grayish white. I had a credit from a previous project at our local BM store, so I had it matched there. When I got home and opened up the 5 gallon bucket, it looked strangely pink. RED FLAG! Instead of stopping right there, I put a coat on our biggest wall, all 21 ft of it. Well, once I was finished for the night, I sat back and it didn’t look as pink, so I was ok with it and went to bed. When I walked out into the room the next morning, I was shocked by the “baby’s bottom” pink wall. Rats. Strike 2. Long story short, the BM store screwed up so they gave us another credit for more paint. At this point, I was so frustrated and confused, I just Googled “popular off white paint color” and came up with BM’s Swiss Coffee. Perfect.

05.November.2012

My ENTIRE condo is painted this chalky grey/blue and I HATE it. I moved in and started painting small stuff (the spare bedroom, a closet, door trim… and then just took the plunge and painted my bedroom a deep blue and it looks AMAZING. I also used the BM Aura paint, because the color was so rich that it was worth it to spend the extra $$ and get perfect coverage in 2 coats (seriously!). I was a bit thrown aback at the price ($70/ gallon!) but it would have cost more to paint, then repaint, right?

05.November.2012

oops, forgot to include a (totally unedited) link! http://missvinylahoy.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_3144.jpg

05.November.2012

I think we’ve all been there. Love the new color. Very ‘you.’ [thats a good thing]

05.November.2012

totally agree with you – why are we all so hesitant to repaint? I think it really is because, for some reason, we think it “shouldn’t” ever happen. We liked the color initially, enough to paint an entire room, so how could we not like it now?

but in the end, we make changes when we aren’t happy with other life decisions – we wear shirts we thought we loved once and realize they’re ugly, we throw away recipes we’ve made if we accidentally put in 5 bundles of garlic instead of 5 cloves (wait…am I the only one who’s done that?), we break up with people when we know the relationship isn’t right, even if we’ve spent a long time in them (or at least I hope we do!). so…why should a paint color be any different?

all this to say – love the post! hopefully your master bedroom repainting yields equally improved results :)

05.November.2012

Good timing, Dana! I was just thinking about this recently. When we renovated out house 2 years ago we painted everything the same light grey. I have never really liked it. It makes my walls look dingy. We repainted the kids room a greyish purple. Hate it. My bathroom is electric yellow (which was painted before we got this house in 06…. yes 06!!! needless to say that wasn’t touched during reno) and it makes me angry everytime I see it! haha. I think I need a nudge to repaint…. although I know my hubs won’t be happy to hear of it. hehe.

05.November.2012

I’ve been looking at our study/home office, and I’m just not loving it. I think a lot of it has to do with all of the clutter, but a bigger part of it is that I just don’t love the paint color. It’s also a super-tiny room, so there’s not a lot of options for rearranging things…I’ve definitely been putting off changing the room, thinking that it might grow on me, but it’s totally not growing. I think I might be hating it more. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m just going to have to empty the entire room and start over from scratch!!

05.November.2012

The new color looks great! And like the others, I am also in awe of how you managed to paint at all with 3 small kids!

We recently moved into a new house and have been struggling to find a paint color for the living room. It faces north so it should be the brightest room, but because of all the trees in the front yard, it’s pretty dark. I never bought sample paints for our last house, but for this living room, I’ve bought 4 pint samples! The worst part is that none of them wowed us or really worked (too blue, too icy, too dark, too bleh).

So this past weekend we finally bought a full gallon of paint – a completely ‘untested’ shade of gray. Fingers crossed that this is finally “the one”!!

05.November.2012

By definition of your blog name, you needed to do this :)

The new paint looks great!

05.November.2012

Okay I am going to repeat what the others said but you go, girl. Painting an entire room with three little ones in the house is amazing. Did you tie them up?
Quick question, and you may have answered this before, but I am new to your wonderful blog. What finish do you use on your walls – matte, eggshell, satin, etc?

05.November.2012

*cackle* So, our living room was painted a sort of cream color the week before we got married. It was a big deal for my husband to paint “his” living room… Of course, the color was chosen to be safe, before we had much furniture and I was still months away from considering color schemes for the house. Fast forward two years and I mentioned that the creamy yellow color was not really working with the direction the decor is going, and his response was a flat out NO, no to the “waste” of money on a new gallon, no to moving the furniture away from the walls, no because sometime in the unplanned future we will be knocking out the main wall to form a great room.

WELL.

I am smart about his stubbornness and didn’t say anything more than Hmmm at the time. But I think the time has come to bring it up gently, making sure he knows I will be doing the painting work and using some of my “blow money” for supplies. Still need him to move bookcases though!

I just read your post and had to laugh. I’m about to repaint our laundry room for the fourth time. We had a mishap with some touch-up paint and now, well, have to start all over again. It is such an easy fix though for some reason it seems monumental.

05.November.2012

I do not have any texture left on my walls in my baby room because I have painted it so much! I could probably scrape it off with a knife! Whats the story behind that cute little couch in between the wardrobes? Love it :)

05.November.2012

Same here with matching Benjamin Moore colors – especially anything from the Affinity line in Aura. While other paints can be great, they are different formulations and the colors, for me, don’t have the same depth and ‘life’ that the BM paint has. Yep, I got sticker shock the first time I bought a gallon of Aura, but darn, do I enjoy the result I got.

05.November.2012

I’ve been lucky with my paint colors and really love them. Good to know about difficulties paint matching Sherwin Williams colors with Behr paints. I’ve got a pale, pale pint SW paint picked out for my bedroom and don’t want to take a chance on it skewing baby girl pink or heavens forbid teenage girl pink. My big issue are the ceilings. I painted most of the rooms when I moved in 5 years ago, but not the ceilings. They are a mess. In certain light you can see yellow streaks. Ugh. I really hate painting ceilings but it needs to be done in the entire condo.

05.November.2012

1. What I wanted was a khaki tan to complement a bright orange accent wall, but it came out peach. Since I had overbought and had an entire unopened gallon that was also well over a year old, I took a look at the trusty color wheel. Since I wanted it browner, I went and got a sample of dark green and then slowly and carefully mixed it in la. Ittle at a time till I got what I wanted. The light tans seem to be a problem area.
2. Problem area #2 started with my then-bachelor husband painting his bedroom red. In a semi-gloss. Without a tinted primer. After 6 coats it still looked terrible, and we eventually repainted with a darker eggshell. But, it really still looks terrible so now “we’re” looking at redoing it in a slate blue. I didn’t mind the idea of red, it just never came out right.

05.November.2012

We’ve been at our place for seven months and had to paint every single room. The person who lived here last must have been color blind, so I was in a hurry to get ANYTHING up on the walls. As a result, I am going to have to go back and repaint the kitchen (too orangey-tan) and the master bath (came out icy blue instead of the aqua I was expecting). Oh, well. I think I’ve had to repaint a room in every house I’ve ever lived in. The sad thing is…I knew as I was painting both rooms I had gotten the colors wrong! That’s the worst.

06.November.2012

I just did the same thing last weekend, a year ago I painted our living room and hallway BM Woodstock Tan, I had it color matched and I don’t know if it was just a mental thing or what thinking that they did NOT match the color correctly with it pulling way too much of an olive green tone or if it just didn’t work with our layout and lighting, every day for a year, I wished I could of snapped my fingers and had it repainted! Ugh but with a hubby away often and 2 wild little boys I could never find the time until, I finally pulled the trigger after not being able to stand it a minute longer and guess what was my inspiration? Bonsai – thanks to you! I looked over your last home pics at least 100x and LOVED the crisp, airy, pale grey and/or green tone Bonsai gave so I’m almost done, have 2 walls yet to go and I adore this fresh light beautiful color! Our living room and hallway look so much bigger and spacious, its amazing!

Anyway all this to say, thank you – love your posts – you are an inspiration! And thank you for the Bonsai recommendation :)

06.November.2012

I grew up in a manufactured home (built in 1968) with wood paneling on the walls. It takes me forever to decide on a paint color. Now I understand why my parents liked paneling … no paint decisions.

06.November.2012

The petite loveseat was in the living room of our previous house. We kept it to use at our apartment bc it was teeny and fit the small living room there well. I thought I’d sell it after that but it fits in perfectly between the two wardrobes. I want to try making a slipcover for it and see what happens.

06.November.2012

Eggshell on drywall, semi-gloss on trim and horizontal planks.

06.November.2012

I love BM Camouflage and I’ve used it a lot. What I love about it is that it’s a complex color, more chameleon, than camouflage. It changes in different light and it’s a true neutral green, never minty. I think that kind of complexity makes it harder to get a good match. Usually the match veers off into one direction and leaves out all the little subtleties that I love.

I never have trouble admitting I’ve made a mistake with color, but I always put off repainting. When I get around to it, I’m always surprised how little time it actually takes paint a room. I also buy about a gajillion sample pots to try for any important space. I’m trying to limit myself to only 4 for the bedroom I’m working on now, but it’s hard.

06.November.2012

Totally agree with you. when we first bought our house I painted one entire floor in tan (varying shades). After living with it for 2 years, we just repainted and its like a different house. And I feel so much better hanging out in those rooms than I did before. I was so stressed because I hated the color.

I love BM Halo. Its one of my favorites and is now in our den and guest bathroom. BM November Rain is similar and its a great neutral as well.

This is my first time commenting but I have been following you for a while now. Love the new house and the updates you have made. Can’t wait to see more!

06.November.2012

‘Paint happens’ – what a great motto!

What a great post! Judging by all your comments, we’ve all been there! The few dollars saved is not worth it in my opinion so always go with the brand if you like it! You’ll be glad you did!

[…] should mention this blog post was inspired by another DIY’er whose blog I read yesterday, House Tweaking. I Iove the honesty among the DIY bloggers who are juggling multiple responsibilities, including […]

06.November.2012

After many, many, MANY times of doing the exact same thing, I have made a new rule that I shall spend 10 minutes rolling out an entire wall of paint – no edging or fine details – first, then live with it for at least 24 hours. If I like it, I’ll continue the room. If not, there isn’t much of a time loss involved in starting over.

If my walls could talk…I’d most likely be embarrassed.

06.November.2012

When I bought my house back in 2003 every single room was wallpapered. I intensely dislike wallpaper so set about ripping it all out before the pros came to do some major rebuilding/renovating. Loo and behold I had *the* house of a thousand colours…. Every single colour imaginable bar yellow, and I have a sneaky suspicion the front door must have been yellow at one point. Case in point the hallway and stairwell was hunter green, baby pink, baby blue, and tan. One bedroom milk chocolate brown with a pink (!) ceiling. Lavender, lime and sky blue in another bedroom. Terracotta and aqua livingroom. BRIGHT in your face hues too! I repainted the whole house with pale cream walls and white ceilings to stop feeling nauseated and give myself time to think about what colours I really wanted. Well now’s the time! Over the next year I’m biting the paint bullet (ball?) and will repaint everything. And I’ll make mistakes. And I’ll repaint, no doubt, but with no guilt. I’ve since learned that the original paint colours had been chosen by the kids in the household (no sh*t Sherlock!) in the early 50’s. After the austerity and dreariness of the war and post-war years (I’m in Europe), bright colourful paint was finally available to the masses and people went into it in a big way!

Really digging your new paint colour, and I think the paint store folks were right; you can really see the chalkiness of it in there. That’s got to be near impossible to match up as it’s more textural body than colour! I’m curious though, how do you not end up with lap marks and visible cutting in edges when it takes that long to cover a wall?

07.November.2012

I know how you feel! I’ve been dealing with feelings of guilt about our own laundry room color (we just painted it a little over a year ago), but I think it’s time for me to bite the bullet and repaint. After seeing the difference it makes in your mudroom, I know it would be totally worth it! I also have to thank you for posting unedited, unstaged pics. It gives the rest of us encouragement that home-decorating is a process, even for talented bloggers such as yourself. Thanks for keeping it real!

07.November.2012

My husband and I bought our first house in 2010 (about 3 months after our wedding). The seller was the real estate agent and had used the house as a rental but was tired of it and wanted out. Before she put the house on the market, she had all the walls painted this lavender/gray color. Now, I like lavender/purple and I really like grey but together (and on every wall in the entire house) – no. So slowly, we have been going room by room and repainting.

I painted the bathroom a medium shade of green after my husband put grey tile in for the shower. It worked but it wasnt great. Then I decided that I wanted to paint our bedroom that green color so I wanted to redo the bathroom color. My mom and I created a wonderful blue that really works a million times better. So I learned that sometimes, a little extra work really is worth it.

07.November.2012

I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. When we were having our basement finished about 5 years ago, I accidentally picked a paint color that was just…wrong. I was going for a very neutral beige, and when I went down to check the progress of the painters (the only time we’ve EVER hired painters instead of doing it ourselves, mind you), it was AWFUL. It was this gawd-awful peach (my *least* favorite color. ever.), dark fleshy tone. I called my husband in a panic, and made the painter stop immediately. No way could I live with that color. We ended up having to shell out the $$ for new paint and the labor to fix it, and donated the 5-gallon bucket of nastiness to the Habitat Restore. Lesson learned.
Is there some sort of minimum time we should be required to live with a color before repainting? My hubby seems to think so…but I painted our bedroom probably 18 months ago, and the color was just never quite right from the start (a too-blue gray, when I really wanted a very “gray” gray)…and of course this would be the one time I bought the “expensive” paint. He keeps saying it’s too soon to repaint, but really, is it ever too soon??

07.November.2012

I was dying to use yellow paint. I have always wanted a nice happy yellow room. SO, I painted my office yellow and went with the traditional Pottery Barn desk set. It looked just liked I pictured it would look… sad thing is I hated it. It was yellow and beautiful and just not me. I live in my office since I work there full time and I was stuck looking at it ALL DAY LONG. Finally… a year later… I figured I had gotten my $50.00 worth out of the yellow paint and I repainted an olive green. Three years… and I still have the green… it is more me. LOL… heaven forbid I would cheat myself out of a whopping fifty bucks!!

07.November.2012

Thanks for the timely post! I was just begging my hubby to help me repaint our entire living room. I knew when I first picked it out that it wasn’t right but have lived with it for the past 18 months because of how long it took us to do it. I feel like my anger towards the room has been growing – glad to see i’m not crazy!

07.November.2012

Thanks so much for the words of wisdom. So true and not only for paint.. I needed that.

08.November.2012

OMG…yes! When we built our house I chose what I thought was going to be a really warm, dark bluish-gray color. We had our dining room, entry way nook and powder room all painted this color. While I don’t “mind” it, I don’t love it at all and really want to repaint. But I’m so lazy! My main reason for not doing it is what will I do if I like the new color even less? LOL. And there are TONS of windows in our dining room and I don’t want to paint around all the wood trim and the baseboards and get paint on them (since it was originally painted before the trim work was done). Ugh.

[…] should mention this blog post was inspired by another DIY‘er whose blog I read yesterday, House Tweaking. I Iove the honesty among the DIY bloggers who are juggling multiple responsibilities, including […]

12.August.2014

[…] *https://www.housetweaking.com/2012/11/05/honest-mondays-repainting/ […]

28.February.2015

Ugh i am having the same troubles with color matching! Spent the afternoon cutting and painting around the trim. I tried Clark and Kensington color matched to BM Tapestry Beige. It’s not like the color chip it’s much cooler and “reads” grey not the creamy greige i was expecting. The paint looks like a match when it’s wet not just not dry. I never like to color match for this very reason. I was just interested in trying a new brand and had been set on this color for a year. I have Brandon Beige in my bedroom that is on the same color card and it looks good. The CK paint seems okay but by no means is it a one coat product like the claim. BTW anyone that’s about to paint Ace Hardware is having a 2 for 1 sale on CK at the end of March, 26-29 I believe!