My First Reveal
So far I’ve talked about paint and wood trim, and what I should do about all the wood in my 90’s house. I gave y’all a peek at my stairs and my fireplace. I thought today I’d let you see what it all adds up to.
First though, I thought I should clarify what I said last week about paint colors and wood trim. I was talking to a friend who read my blog post and I might have implied that only blues and greens look good with wood windows and doors. I realize now I should choose my words more carefully. Oops. Lesson learned.
There are many warm colors that could go with your wood trim, I just happen to be decorating with blues at the moment. If you happen to have wood trim you aren’t doomed to decorating your whole house with cool colors forever. That could be really bad if you hated blue. The trick with warm colors is to make sure there is enough contrast between the wall and the trim. In other words, if you have orangey wood, dark orange walls might not be your best choice, and since it’s subjective, maybe you wholeheartedly disagree with me, even though I’m right. Same principle applies if you have yellowy wood trim. And neither one of those would go with a beige with pink undertones, the wall would look dirty, and then you’d never be able to let your mother-in-law visit. Here’s another great post on picking colors to go with your wood trim by Maria Killam, my go to expert on paint colors.
Now, on to the fun stuff. If you remember, I painted the fireplace and parts of the staircase white. I also painted the baseboards and door frames. I had the all the beige walls painted before I moved in to help brighten things up and reflect more light. I also took down the dated ceiling fan in the living room and put up a new light fixture since the only light came from the shiny brass can lights by the fireplace, which I also updated with flat white ones.
Here’s what it looked like before. (These pictures have the previous owners furniture in them, and were taken by a professional photographer who brought in a bunch of lights, making it appear much brighter than it really was. The walls almost appear white instead of beige in these pictures.)
Living Room Before
Another before picture from a different viewpoint
Here is what it looks like today with a little bit of paint and a new light fixture (and my furniture, of course). I’m really liking the mix of white and wood. I just can’t decide whether to paint my window trim. I painted my door trim and I love it. You can see one the french doors with white trim in the background of the second picture.
Living Room After
Another View
I love this room. The colors are soft and serene and the room is bright and airy. We use this as our formal living room and music room so it is always clean for guests, or just a quiet place to relax and read a book - unless someone is practicing or my grandson has his little friends over, of course.
Now let’s talk about how this room tells a story. Nothing in this room is arbitrary. I started with the painting that I love, which I’ve had for a long time, and dictated my color palette. The chairs were a bargain when Pier 1 closed their brick and mortar stores. The colors went perfectly with my painting. The sofa was a splurge. Since this is my formal living room I felt justified in spending a little extra on one with some style that would last a long time and was a fantastic color. I collected the pillows one at a time as I came upon them until I had the perfect mix for the room. I decided to go pretty subtle for the rugs, going with a blue gray to go with my blue gray walls and sofa. This is my foundation.
The piano is here because five of my six kids and I play. The cabinet holds music. The things on the cabinet and tables all came from places we visited or are family heirlooms. There’s a family portrait on the wall, and the other wall is a painting of the building where we were married. On the fireplace is an anniversary clock that belonged to my parents. The vase came from a trip I took to Poland years ago when we lived overseas, my grandson is in the picture frame, and the mirror I bought for $5 at a yard sale when we were young and poor. It used to be an ugly brass color, so I brightened it up with some paint to go with the fresh new gold finishes. I picked up some lamps on clearance, and waited for the coffee table to go on sale and voila, my living room is complete. Like I said on my home page, each piece is carefully chosen and curated, telling a story, not something that came from a furniture showroom - and see what you can learn about me just by visiting my living room.
Wood Trim - What Stays, What Goes?
So you’ve moved into a house full of wood trim. Let’s assume it’s not a historic craftsman or victorian home, one built more recently and you want to bring it into this century. Should you paint? Personally I feel like all that wood makes a house feel dark. Some people consider it a high crime to paint over solid wood. To be fair, it is hard to undo. When we looked at our house and we were making the decision whether to put in an offer, one of my biggest sticking points was all that stained wood. It’s a well built, good quality home - all brick, oak floors, solid wood doors, wood windows, oak trim, oak staircase, solid wood cabinets - but all that wood felt oppressive and a little overwhelming to me. The doors are beautiful, painting those would feel like a crime, and painting the windows seemed out of the question - raising and lowering them would just cause the paint to scrape off and peel. I had to decide if I could change it enough, without having to completely renovate it, to be happy with it - before we made an offer. I spent far too long just living with things and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life and a small fortune on a house I had to tolerate.
I knew I had to paint the baseboards, but would that be enough, and how would it look? I went to the internet and searched for pictures of interiors with wood doors and white trim. I was pleasantly surprised, and even a little excited. I found beautiful interiors full of white trim framing wood doors and windows and the contrast is beautiful, the wood adding warmth to the room.
This is a beautiful example of how to mix white trim and wood stain. Saved from yaydecor.wordpress.com. Read Tiffany Brook’s post here for more ideas on what to do with oak trim.
Saved from freshouz.com. You can see more stained doors and with white trim on Carey Davalos’ post here.
I got excited. I knew that not only could I live with my wood doors and windows, but they would be a beautiful contrast to my white trim and cabinets. Did I mention that my husband insisted that since I didn’t get to build my dream house I should have the white shaker cabinets and quartz countertops I’d been dreaming of in the new house? Yes, he did - and not only will I have the perfect house someday but I have the perfect man. And that was it. I made my decision and the rest is history… and a little work on my part.
I started with the fireplace, you can see that on my projects page, or read about in last week’s blog post. This week I’ll give you a sneak peek at the staircase. I decided to paint the balusters, risers, and stringers white, but leave the handrail, treads, and newel oak. My staircase is on one end of the living room, and between that and the fireplace this room is becoming one of my favorites.
This project is a little tedious and I used a lot of painter’s tape to make sure that I didn’t get paint on the things that are supposed to stay wood. Again I used Zinsser Cover Stain oil-based primer and then painted it with Behr Oil-base Semi-gloss Enamel in Benjamin Moore’s Decorator’s White. Some day I hope to get that horrid carpet off the stairs but that will have to wait a little since there aren’t beautiful wood treads going all the way across. It won’t be an easy or cheap fix. Here’s the (mostly) finished product. The lighting is a little different and I pushed pause on the railing upstairs so I could focus on painting the trim on the main floor. I wish I’d finished it and taken a picture before we filled the living room with furniture. It makes the room just a little brighter and updates the space.
To Paint or not to Paint
It all began five years ago when we bought three acres on the edge of town. We were going to build our dream house and live there till we die. No more stupid layouts, no more tiny closets - or worse lack of closets, no more dark rooms, tiny dining rooms, ugly tile, steep staircases, basement laundry rooms, nasty carpet, 7 ft. ceilings, backpacks in my living room… and best of all, no more packing or moving. Ever. Again.
I spent 29 years collecting ideas - things I liked, things I didn’t, things that worked, and things that didn’t. I clipped pictures from magazines and as technology advanced, saved more ideas in folders on my computer. Eventually I discovered Pinterest - what a glorious invention - and I started pinning and pinning, also saving ideas on Houzz, and I read blogs. I designed it myself, inside and out, refining it over the years. I learned about construction, how to draft, and I drew up the plans. I put it in my TapGlance app and arranged the furniture and hung curtains so I could walk through it in 3D and admire it. I lived in it virtually for years, tweaking it here and there. I finally had the plans for the perfect house. We planted trees, we had a contractor, we had sewer, we were getting ready to put in a driveway.
But things don’t always work out exactly like we plan, do they? Instead of getting to build my dream house, we bought a house. I won’t bore everyone with the details. It’s a beautiful house, with a great layout, and I only had to sacrifice a few things - my mudroom separate from the laundry room, a main floor guest room, an office for my husband in the house, 9’ ceilings, and my walk-in pantry. Instead my mudroom is in the laundry room, my guest room is upstairs, we built Karry’s office in the heated detached garage, and I’ll just turn an extra half-bath in the laundry room into an extra pantry. In exchange I got the open layout, main floor laundry room, walk-in closets, master bathroom, and fenced in yard I’ve never had. And bonus - an awesome yard with mature trees and all the landscaping already done for me.
What’s the catch, you say? Wood. And shiny brass. Everywhere. This house was built in 1992 and is firmly stuck in the 90’s. Wood-stained trim, wood-stained doors and windows, oak fireplace mantels, oak banisters and balusters, oak floors, and oak kitchen cabinets, 90’s style. My dreams of light, open spaces with 9’ foot ceilings, white windows, white trim and doors, white french doors, white fireplace surrounds, a white staircase, and light wood floors, dashed. I’m now immersed in wood and 8’ popcorn ceilings.
Before we moved in the first thing I did was paint. I guess I should say I hired someone to paint. After painting our last house so we could sell it, I vowed never to pick up another paintbrush - or roller. I got rid of the beige walls and brightened up the interior - I’ll save paint colors for another post. I then planned out what to paint white and what to leave wood. Then I broke my vow never to pick up another paintbrush and painted the fireplace. I could feel my father-in-law turning over in his grave with every brush stroke. I could also feel the judgment coming from my husband and other family members when I announced that I was going to paint over a solid oak fireplace mantel. I called a friend who had done the same thing for some emotional support and went for it.
Said friend also mentioned that she wished she had used oil-based paint instead of latex because she was painting over wood stain and she had trouble with scuffing and peeling. I took her advice and started with Zinsser Cover Stain oil-based primer. This gave me a base coat for the paint to stick to without having to sand it first. Then I painted it with Behr Oil-base Semi-gloss Enamel in Benjamin Moore’s Decorator’s White. Home Depot carries it. I had to buy it in quart size because of restrictions in the state where I live. Behr is always my go-to paint just because it has great coverage and I don’t have to paint a second coat. It costs more per gallon, but I spend less in the end. I sometimes have to do a few touch ups, but never a full second coat, even when covering red paint with a light color. The oil-based paint takes about a week to cure, but it hardens into a nice hard finish that is easy to clean.
Before
After
The white mantel against the brick of the fireplace really pops, and completely changes the room. It’s like someone turned on the lights. My husband and mom both admitted it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately I can’t ask my father-in-law for his opinion.