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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
The Wop
What are your thoughts on painting for open living areas? Our living room, dining area, and kitchen are all open to each other. And all three rooms share a wall.
I'm assuming one would just paint all three the same color?
(Sliders out to deck on left of table in this picture...only small amount of wall to paint)
(Sliders out to deck to the right of the table in this picture)
I'm assuming the previous owner didn't know what to do either, so she just painted 2 walls that hideous maroon or whatever you'd call it.
And I guess looking at the kitchen, there is not much to paint. Just the area below the cabinets.
*It's going to take us forever to paint over that crap color! 
Any tips for that?
Re: The Wop
My first thought is to do the same color paint in the kitchen, slider wall and back wall (the one with the oval mirror), and then do an accent wall on the wall on the left (where the tv is). I am personally a fan of dark brown accent walls. I don't know why, I just think they look really nice. What colors did you have in mind? What other things in the kitchen are you changing? Cabinets? Countertops? Floors?
As for covering the maroon, make sure to get your primer tinted whatever color you want to paint.
I know you're asking Wop for help, but I love when I see open floor plans where the rooms flow right into each other and the color of one room is one shade, then the color of the next room is in the same family, but a different light or darkness. It flows really well together and looks sharp. This is just an example, but this kind of concept:
Use tinted primer to cover up dark colors. Depending on what color your new paint is going to be and what you're covering up, the paint store will suggest using a grey or tan primer sometimes to cover the dark. If you use white, it'll bleed through for coats and coats. And there still might be some bleeding with tinted primer, but that's OK. You still should only need a coat or two of primer. It won't be that bad!
I love Behr's primer + paint. Love it! We used it in the nursery to cover up the God-awful red I had in there.
I have no idea what color I was thinking for new house....something light and airy. We are starting from complete scratch with this room (we need everything). The one thing I really really really want to do is replace the carpet in the dining area and livingroom with Brazilian cherry floors. I am still trying to decide if I want to carry that through to the entryway and kitchen.
Gah! More ugly maroon. I want to paint the entryway a different color than the living, dining, kitchen, but I want them to flow. BTW, I SUCK at picking paint colors.
I am not changing the cabinets in the kitchen. I wanted to paint them white but my dad basically told me I was an idiot for thinking that. He said the current cabinets are really expensive and I would ruin them. So whatever...I'll keep them for now. (I wasn't too excited to take on the huge job of painting them anyway...)
The countertops are going! I hate them. But I have NO IDEA what color for a countertop. I fear that if I change the floor in the kitchen that the woods would clash and then I would have trouble choosing a countertop.
Sigh. This is such a huge job and we don't have a huge budget.
I have an open floor plan with the living room, dining room, and stair way.
I wish I had pictures to show you.
I did a brown about the color of milk chocolate on the living room ceiling (it's vaulted), the part of the stair case connected to the living room, and the part of the dining room connected to the living room. I did apple green on the dining room ceiling, and remaining walls. Ice blue on the remaining living room walls, and a yellow in the remaining staircase walls. I also took the yellow down the hallway to the entrance.
Thank you! Those colors are so pretty. I was totally thinking light grey-greens for this area.
Question: How do you seperate the colors? Where do you stop painting one color and start another? My biggest challenge is the one really long wall that all 3 rooms share. Would you paint that wall one shade, and then under the cabinets a different shade, and then on the opposite wall (with the mirror) a different shade?
I would love to see pictures on how you put all that together!
Can you restain the cabinets something to match your new wood floors? It certainly wouldn't be any easier than painting them, but you could change the hue w/o painting over wood. Stain would just absorb into the wood grain, and I wouldn't think would "ruin" them. I'd ask your dad.
Could you do wood floors in the dining and living rooms, and then tile in your kitchen? That way you might not have to worry about your wood floors and cabinets competing with each other.
Our dining area and kitchen has an open floor space, and we have tile in our kitchen and wood in the dining room and rest of the house. It flows just fine, and changes where the walls come out (hard to describe). There is a threshold to divide where the floor changes, and it looks good. Just an idea.
Just to show you what a painting nightmare this is going to be:
Gah!
Gah! Well, at least it's a clean slate.
So boring!
I love that idea. I hate the honey oak color.
We could. What would you do about the entryway? When you walk in the house from the front door into the entry way, straight ahead is the dining area, and there is a little "pathway" I guess to the kitchen off to the right. Right now, there is linoleum in the entryway and the kitchen.
I suppose we could do wood floors in the entry, living and dining, and tile in the kitchen. That could work I think.
I would paint the long wall the same color, and go lighter/darker in the different rooms from there.
I suck at picking colors also. I got the green/brown idea from the wop, and took my gay neighbor with me to the store to pick out the actual shades.
For my bedroom, I took the pillow sham in, and the girl helped me with shades. She also gave me lots of decorating tips for the room as well.
She doesn't post much on the D&R board anymore now that she's pg, but if you can find her bio mrspaz has a really nice house with light and airy colors and decor. Most of the colors in her house are light greys and blues.
Here is a pic of an open floor plan that I think could look really good. I really like the greyish tan color with the greyish blue. The countertops in the pic look really good with the cabinets too.
Love that!
I agree w/ the tile in the kitchen. We have brazilian cherry floors in our living room (which is to the right of the kitchen), and matching cabinets to that color would have been a night mare. We have a cream tile in the kitchen and then dark wood cabinets.
Excuse the bad images - they are from when we were looking at the house (so not our furniture, etc)
Kitchen: (the cabinets look darker in person)
Living Room (to right of kitchen - 2 steps down)
Here's one thats a little more grey:
OMG I LOVE your house! JealousE!
Thanks... I seriously need decorating help, though. Want to come over and give me some ideas some day?
Sure!
We can have a doggie play date at the same time!
Just one piece of advice, I LOVE our floors, but it is hard to find colors and furniture that look good with them. The previous owners had painted the tan and we decided to leave it. Although, we had the added dimension of the brown fireplace. (jury is still out on if we will paint it or not). I would take lots of paint samples from lots of different families and hold them up to a wood sample to figure out what looks best, and then go from there. What color furniture do you have?
Me too!!! Gahhh!!! Gorgeous! I cannot wait to have my new floors installed! SO pretty.
We have nothing for this room. We are building this room from scratch. We need furniture, paint, floors, decor, curtains, etc, plus I want to add an electric fireplace.
We have a gray couch that we are probably putting in the basement. Probably with the same color walls as my livingroom now...ha.
It's nice that you can start from scratch. As for the basement - if you know you like that color, why not go w/ it?! We did our family room in the same blue my mom did her kitchen. I knew what the shade would look like large scale, so I never doubted.
I just found this online - kinda fun to play around w/ to get an idea of what you like. You pick the floor color and the can change the walls to different colors.
http://www.armstrong.com/flooring/design-tools.htmlWe've had REALLY good luck with Sherwin-Williams stores. The people there are very knowledgeable and the paint is great quality. I wish we would have gotten ALL of our paint there from the beginning, rather than trying to use cruddy Menards paint.
By the way, WTH is up with that purple/gold/striped madness of that bedroom!?!
Thank you! Isn't it hideous!?!
Maybe they were huge LSU fans
It reminds me of something Moroccan themed... but gone horribly wrong.
Hahahaha