This House Is Starting To Look Like Somebody Lives Here

We are learning a lot about painting rooms, and the family room went much more smoothly than some of the other rooms we have done (although the living room went smoothly, we didn't do that one). The walls sucked in so much color that it dried almost instantly. It made it possible to finish in one evening, but it also made it take much longer to get the edging done because we had to keep dipping the brush.

Some of our favorite tips: when you take a break, wrap everything up in foil so you can just pick right up where you left off. Tape the color card behind a switchplate so you will never wonder what color you painted (especially if you are selling the house). Paint the first coat super light, even if there are white spots; the paint will look much more even later. Store your leftover paint in a jelly jar to limit the exposure to air. This makes it much easier to do touchups later, and it saves space as well.

These before-and-after photos don't exactly show the right shade. They show a light, preppy sort of blue, but we actually used Benjamin Moore Stratton Blue (HC-142), which is much darker than it seems. In the daylight, you can really see that it is an historic color. We are trying to keep all of our house colors in the historic palette from now on. These colors would have been perfect for our 1922 Old West Side house in Ann Arbor, but we think they work here, too.