Lisa: Painting: upstairs bathroom and hall

ljc's house painting projects inspired me to go ahead and start on the painting I've sort of vaguely planned on doing around my house. Our paint is in good repair, but it's all beige and white and blah. I was especially impressed by ljc's willingness to try bold colors, so after thinking about the colors I might want in each room, Sarah and I went to Home Depot and picked up a whole bunch of paint chips. I stuck my favorites up on the walls and lived with them for a few days, and then took Blake on a tour and got him to sign off (according to GLP standards, of course) on the colors he approved of. Here are my first two finished areas:

Upstairs Bathroom

Here's what the bathroom looked like before:

You can't see terribly well in that photo, but the wall the sink and toilet are on was covered with wallpaper in a large floral heavy on the burgundy and navy blue. The other walls were beige. Sarah helped me strip off the wallpaper, and after a LOT of scraping and patching, the wall was ready to paint. The other walls just needed a quick wipedown with TSP. I taped off the trim and ceiling and got started.

Here's the result:

I was going for a bright Tiffany blue, and I LOVE the color. I really like how it makes the white fixtures look brighter and the chrome shinier. The color is Ralph Lauren's "Aegean Blue," but I had the guy at Home Depot match it in Behr paint, which costs about half as much. Actually, I had the first guy try to match it, but he just put the Ralph Lauren formula into the Behr paint base, which totally didn't work. The awesome paint guy at the store on Highland exchanged the ruined paint for new paint that was color-matched to the RL paint chip. I am definitely going straight to him next time.

Upstairs Hall

I don't have a before picture of the hallway, but it was a dark beige with a really ugly ceiling fixture involving yellow glass. I decided I wanted the hall a sunny, buttery yellow, so I chose Behr's "Cornmeal." Once I got it all painted and turned on the light, I realized that yellow paint + yellow walls = oven. It was a good excuse to choose a new light fixture for the hall. Blake and I went to Lowe's, which seemed to have the widest selection of reasonably-priced fixtures. Along with the new hall lamp, we got new shades to replace the flowery granny ones on the bathroom sconces, as well as new towel racks for the bathroom that matched the faucets more closely. These small changes made a huge difference in both areas. Yay!

I love how the yellow looks next to the blue of the bathroom when you're walking by...

I had to put all the paint stuff away before leaving for Boston, but I'm excited to get going again when I get back!