houses and paint

[gosling]

Last night I was at two parties. They were fun in their own right, but the thing I keep thinking about was the color schemes of the various rooms in both houses. Lyonesse has one wall bright red in her third floor kitchen and it really, really works, even though that is a tiny room. And the dark colors in the hallways look wonderful too (and they aren't even colors I generally like, so that says something...)

And I suspect that miss_chance and palmwiz' house had all the awesome dark colored walls in the various rooms when I was at their party last year, but I wasn't in this space of being more interested in architecture and interior decorating than people (though I definitely architecture geeked at their house; I love the architecture of that house) so I didn't remember it. But I just kept looking at the different colors of the walls in different rooms (again, mostly not even colors I usually like, except that they looked so incredibly *right* on those walls, so I loved how they looked there) and it revised a bit how I thought about color and space.

(ok, so mostly I was sitting on the couch because I was really, really tired, but even there I was thinking about the colors I had seen in different rooms and how and why they worked so well and how that might translate to different colors in different houses.)

When we painted our house I was intimidated by the idea of using really dark colors in smallish rooms; that's why the darkest walls we have are the deep lavender of the living room and the only true purple is the interior of the hutch.

But now I am fascinated by the alcoves in our house, and I want to do something to emphasize them. (And I am bored with the very very pale lavender of most of the house. I think only one person not involved in the painting (thank you again *immensely* to all our wonderful friends who helped paint!) has ever noticed that they aren't actually white.)

It would be really cool to do my study alcove in several purples and Chip's in equivalent shades of dark jewel-tone or forest green. (He likes purple best, but he also really likes dark greens, and generally if we are differentiating two similar items of ours by color he gets the green one. And it seems like the contrast of having somewhere a different color in a mostly purple house would be really cool.)

And I want to do the bedroom wall opposite the bed (and maybe the ceiling) a dark dark purple and stick glow in the dark stars on it. And do all sorts of shades of purples (and maybe some jewel-tones blues and greens) in the rest of the alcoves.

And hence, a dilemma: because we could do all that. It's cold enough that the neighbors aren't outside smoking, so we certainly could have windows open. And it would make the house look wonderful. (And probably make it even harder to sell.)

And I am realizing how much I have come to love the architecture of this house. It is beautiful and full of history and nifty shaped alcoves. :-) But I hate the neighborhood more every day. Every time I go into Davis Square I want to live there so badly that it is a literal physical feeling, and that just gets stronger.

So do I make this house more mine and even harder to leave? And I think the answer would be no (even if we weren't too disorganized and busy to ever get to it anyway.) It will be hard enough to leave already, but this is *not* where I want to sink down roots. And ok, it could be years before we can afford to leave, and I *am* going to put things on the walls in various dark and bright colors, but it doesn't make sense to sink that much more time and energy into something someone else will just paint over anyway. (But I *want* to paint it anyway, a little corner of my brain insists...)

But when we do finally get a place where we want to be, it's going to have a much bolder color scheme. And meanwhile I will just keep admiring other people's houses. :-)

Comments

[totient]

You know, we painted a lot of these same colors on the rental in DC that we had for only just over a year. The hard part of painting is the prep; redoing a wall you've done recently is really easy. So if you're worried about wasted effort, don't.

Oh, and get good paint. Ben Moore is pretty easy to find, covers well, and comes in a lot of great colors. The green in the dining room is Coronado, and the orange office is also a Coronado base but hand-tinted, but most of the rest of the house (including the very similar orange in the pantry) are stock Ben Moore colors.

And the mustard in my bedroom was there when we arrived; I don't think it affected the price of the house at all.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

the great thing about paint is, once you've started, it's really easy to continue the process until you're happy. the first coat in the machine room was pale blue, which i turned out *not* to like once it was up; putting the teal wash over that was easy, and now i like it. my bedroom was a more pinky purple the first coat, then i decided i liked the somewhat more orchid-esque wash, so i did it solid that shade. jonathan's room was a little dark as just "willow green" so the white wash (made with leftover ceiling paint) brightened it right up. and the red wall was too pale until about the fourth coat, and now i quite like it too.

my point being...? just that it's not like i knew in advance, but once you've started painting, you needn't feel obligated to have gotten it right the first time. keep going until you're happy, or at least, that's what i did :)

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I think the pain in the ass part about painting is moving all the furniture around. If you can get very good at painting, particularly at painting quickly and at hand "cutting" with a brush so that you don't have to tape the trim at all, you can often talk someone else into moving the furniture in exchange for your skill and expertise at painting. :-) :-)

I have an excellent book that helps visualize strong colors in use in rooms. If I think of it I can bring it to your place (if I can make it) this weekend.