With that, around that same time, I had recently read an article titled, Painting Like the French and like the concept so we talked about it. She thought the idea would work well here. It's where you pick one color and paint the ceiling, trim and walls using it but in the appropriate finishes. Satin walls, flat ceiling and semi gloss on trim. The builder had opted to paint the entire house in flat paint. It was awful and like I said, I really don't think he ever painted the trim at all.
Going back to my last house, I had experience with using different shades of the same color. My bedroom had a sleeping area and a sitting room with a large bay window and vaulted ceiling. The way the rooms intersected, the bedroom shared the width into the sitting area so the room felt very large. When I painted those 2 rooms, I painted a lighter color in the bedroom knowing when I used the next shade darker with the vault and the bay window, that the colors would look different from each other. The result after all that work was they looked exactly the same. I realized at that moment, never to do that again that light and reflections will make the paint look different on their own.
I really wanted, in addition to the calm creamy white, a nice pleasant blue. She choose SW Samovar Silver to compliment and it's beautiful! I used that color in the diningroom, the office across the hall, the powder room and the downstairs guest room. At some point, when I correct the disaster of a laundry room layout, I plan to paint those walls the same pleasant blue color or possibly repaint the cabinets in a steel blue gray and use the Natural Choice for the walls, ceilings, trim. That's on our list to discuss.
So as we rid the house of the flat gold walls and ceilings and the brown walls in the bonus room, the house reflected a lot more light. The trim going from matte to semi-gloss further made the space more pleasant. I painted my dining room and when I got to the coffers it's because of that that I say it was never painted, only primed, because I was painting over caulk. Normally you caulk and then paint. In any event, it took a week but the room is gorgeous now!
The upstairs 3 bedrooms and 2 baths had a light beige ceiling with pink for the girls rooms and a royal blue for the boy room. Having one cohesive color made the space very pleasant and calm. So that was step one on making this house ours. That was just under 2 years ago.
After that was done the carpet had to go. It was the cheapest carpet I ever walked on. The fibers were too spread apart and you could feel the backing under foot. The builder, and his only excuse of "it's not required", didn't bother to insulate between floors nor did he insulate bathrooms. I DO NOT recommend doing the bare minimum in order to save a few hundred dollars, especially soming from someone calling himself a "custom" builder. He is NOT a custom builder but merely making the claim. If your builder wants to charge you an unreasonable amount for simple upgrades that should be SOP, do not hire him or her.
Anyway, about $10,000 later we threw away his cheap, lowest quality on the planet, 4lb padding and went with an 8lb pad. We got rid of his $1 a SF carpet and went with $5SF with a soft pile in order to reduce the gaps under every bedroom entrance door to add privacy.
Another benefit of me doing this, is as the rooms were gutted, it was clear that the floor, and in particular, the space under the baseboard behind the nail strips was NEVER cleaned before the carpet went down. They just laid it down over the sawdust and sheet rock dust. It's a crying shame that "clean up" isn't required". I worked like a dog to stay ahead of the carpet guys. As they gutted, I wouldn't let them install carpeting until the foor was completely vaccumed. It took all day and at one point they caught up to me and I had to tell them to take a break. I would't let them lay carpet while 4 year old construction debris remained.
So between the paint and the flooring, we were on to a new looking home.
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