Colors are very important in home renovations. You don’t want all that time, effort and renovation money to be wasted by poor color selection. We had used the color-coordinator, Debbie, from the store where we purchased our paint in a prior home’s main floor and because of the nice job she did there we had her come out and give us color recommendations for this entire house.
BEFORE
The first picture is the ‘before’ picture of the family room. Notice the blue carpet, blue walls and floor to ceiling fireplace. While blue is one of our daughters favorite colors, it’s not ours for a family room. As well the brick of the fireplace just overpowered everything else. The curtains were at least 10 years old and there was no lighting other than floor lamps and the southern exposure windows out to the backyard & forest.
AFTER
The picture below is the first of two ‘after’ pictures.
- Pot lights on a dimmer switch were installed in the ceiling.
- The blue paint was replaced (after double washing of the walls with TSP for the smoke / nicotine) with an earthy green to complement the forest view our the windows.
- The blue carpet was replaced with hardwood. Again, we thank Sam, our hardwood flooring salesperson, for recommending we stick with the Jatoba Espresso hardwood. We think it complements the wall color, the trees of the forest out back as well as the color of our kitchen counter of which a sneak peak can be seen to the right in the picture (more on the kitchen in further posts).
Also:
- We had the part of the fireplace above the mantle covered with fire-retardant drywall so it no longer is the focal point of the room; the focal point becomes the forest out the windows.
- The window coverings were replaced with a pull down see-through fabric shade. We chose this to keep the sun’s rays from directly hitting the hardwood (and in time fading the dark brown stain) yet allow us to still see outside. Our dog likes to perch herself on top of the back of the chair on the left of the second ‘after’ picture below and view her ‘estate’, even when the pull down blind is covering the window.
Color selection and coordination is critical in any renovation. It’s the end product that you have to live with for a long time.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Jen / domestika // Jan 1, 2008 at 5:19 pm
That fireplace fix is just stunning - a relatively simple renovation task, with incredible pay-off in impact. (Note to self - fire-retardant drywall for this…) Keep up the great posts and before-and-after pictures!
2 annette nevitte // Jan 23, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I love the color you have on the walls of your family room. Could you email me with the color name and brand of paint. I live in a 15 sided house and my living room reminds me of yours with lots of large windows. I’m on 5 acres and overlook a large pond with lost of trees. Thank you!!!
3 dan // Jan 24, 2008 at 1:13 am
Hi Annette,
Sure thing. I’ll send it to you by return email.
Thank you for your comment. Do drop a line to tell us how your home improvement is proceeding (and especially if the paint turns out for you as it did for us in the pictures).
4 Todd Roat // Jan 4, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Would love to know what color that room is as well ;^)
5 Dan // Jan 4, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Hi Todd,
It is called ‘Yucca Green’. I checked a tin we still have with the left over paint and the lid had the number 14-22 written on it when the paint was mixed.
For this paint we used Pratt & Lambert.
I hope this helps.
Dan
6 Mama bear // Mar 24, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I wanted to ask how you covered up the bricks.
I have an ugly brick fireplace; and would love to cover up as much as I can.
7 Dan // Mar 24, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Hi Mama Bear (and,no, that does not make me Papa Bear
)
Some people have had good success with a product called Brick Anew.
As we do not use the fireplace (actually want to get rid of it and trim down to an insert, but no money or time at the moment to do that), we simply used regular paint. It is an extremely painstaking and slow process, takes two coats, but for us it worked out nicely.
Dan
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