Until Science and Math took over my scholastic passion, I had enjoyed Art.  I took Basic Interior Design twice in college (just for fun – one with my roommate, once with my husband) but have never studied it seriously.   Color, however, does intrigue me.  Mark used to warn me that our wallboard in Washington was going to peel apart because we had applied too many coats of paint.  I never worried about that – not only does it sound silly, I just don’t think there can be too many coats of paint.  I love to experiment with the color of my walls and so when Mark comes home and sees a new gallon of paint he good-naturedly changes into his painting clothes and asks where to begin…

This was a beautiful room, just too dark for me.

One of my favorite transformations was the family room in our Texas home.  Every home we looked at was some shade of brown.  Texas seemed to be a year or two (or more) years behind the trend to lighten-up, but I knew we would need to paint before we moved in to what appeared to be a brown paper bag.  Mark spent two months alone in Texas and in his spare time he painted walls and ceilings.  I had just one day at the start of those two months, and I spent it painting the cabinets a nice creamy color.  We realized our creamy trim was actually an ugly beige… After it was painted white I had to redo our cabinets as well…

First order of business was to paint the cabinets.

Before moving four years later we painted every room, trim, cabinet, door and ceiling in our home.  I am writing a series of blogs about our painting adventures so that they will never be forgotten.

The walls are painted “Silver Marlin” by Benjamin Moore.  They always looked blue and I later learned to use “Stonington Gray” which turns out just right.

What a difference to have the ceiling painted white!  Look what happened to the trim – we thought it was cream until we painted the walls.  Yikes!

I snapped this photo on the day I moved away.  The trim, cabinets and even the fireplace are all white.  The color is “Marshmallow” by Sherwin Williams.

Here is our family room while we lived in the house.  It is while it was for sale, otherwise there would be more family photos on the shelves and mantel.