Painting

One of the biggest changes you can do in a house for the least amount of money is paint. It's easy right? Buy a gallon of paint, bring it home, paint the walls and ...bam, transformation complete.

The truth is, painting can be really inexpensive, but costs can add up if you don't really know what you are doing.

I am not an expert, but I do speak from experience. I have painted more rooms than I can remember, most of them more than once. Picking paint can be challenging. Paint chips are not an ideal way to pick a color. The color seems right under the hardware store fluorescents, but home on the walls it is all wrong. So back to the store to try again.

So Nick and I have started to buy paint at the ReStore and mix our own custom colors. It is fun, cheap and gives us more control. Plus you get to keep nasty chemicals out of the landfills. Win-win!

So I started out with a white base( the same paint that we used on the wood paneling and a dark gray/brown. I then added a bit of a grayish green.

The key is to mix well and test often.

I wanted a greige color, something nuetral so all the art can really pop!

At first, I thought maybe I had gone too dark, but now I think it is perfect. There is so much white that it doesn't seem dark, it is a nice contrast.

So the painting is done in the dining room...finally (actually it was weeks ago, I am just really behind on my blog posts)

So what should we do with the china cabinet? Paint it? What color? Stain it? Leave it?

Let me know what you think.