I am still working on The Big House Job and will put in another full week over there next week. By then, I should have almost all of the rooms that are ready for prepping and painting on the 3rd and 2nd floors. Although most rooms on these 2 floors are just being straight painted, I love the soft, muted tones that the homeowners have selected, and am finding this change from decorative painting to be very relaxing. It is fun to see each room come alive, especially on the 3rd floor, which needed the most TLC to get the walls back in shape.
The client has a very clear idea of how she wants each room to feel and look: clean lines, soft, serene colors. It can be overwhelming when selecting a paint color for a room, and when faced with selecting paint colors for an entire house full of rooms, it can be down right exhausting! To unify the entire house, the ceiling and all woodwork are being painted with Pratt and Lambert’s Designer White. This is my first experience using Pratt and Lambert paints and it has been very positive, other than trying to actually acquire the paint! This white is not too bright and as pure of a white as you can get. I’m not seeing gray, blue, pink or yellow tones in this white, that often happens with many of the white paints. The problem of finding this paint in my area has been a pain in the butt. One store is in the next town, but in the opposite direction of where I am traveling daily. That store opens late, for a paint store, and closes early. 🙁 Yesterday, I drove there to buy more ceiling paint, arriving 45 minutes after the opening time of this store, and it was closed. There is another P & L dealer, sort of on the way to this job, but it NEVER seems to be open! My last choice is a dealer in Boston, which comes with the traffic and parking problems, and very surly help.
To get the color desired, we have been creating our own colors by cutting most colors by 50%. If you find a paint chip that you like, but feel is a little off, it’s easy for the paint store to make adjustments with the formula. The colors flow nicely on the 3rd floor. The room that will be the Home Office is painted with one paint and that same paint, cut by 50% is being used in the adjacent room that will be the Library. That same paint will be cut again, for the Guest Room on that floor. With the white trim and white ceilings the clean, serene look is being achieved. While the ceiling and trim paints are Pratt and Lambert, most of the wall paints we are using are Benjamin Moore. This makes me very happy, because my dealer is just down the street from me and they are experts at mixing up colors. 🙂
The second floor, which has the Boys Bubble Bedroom and Bath will be done using shades of blues. We will cut the blue paint used in the Boys Bedroom by 50% for the Play Room walls. I’ll be working on that floor next week, so will have more on that later.
Today I will be working on pulling together some color and design options for the first floor of this house. Also, my friend, Marc Bordet contacted me about doing some work in a Lobby of a commercial building we had looked at several months ago.
Recently I saw this picture posted on 2 different blogs and loved the cane design used for the background. It is a Rattan stencil design from one of my favorite design companies, the Stencil Library. I emailed Rachel for some specifics so I can price out this job over the weekend. In the meantime, Marc has showed this picture to the client and they love the idea, so hopefully this will be a go for me in the near future. This design comes in several sizes and can also be customized to your needs. I am also going to try to get this design in somewhere at the Big House Job. I could see this on a ceiling or behind a headboard in their new Master Bedroom… hmm.. maybe this could be in both the the new Master Bedroom AND Bath. More ideas to work on!
