Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hard Core Remodeling but Were Afraid to Ask Part 23!

I'm known for one of three things:

A) Bold, fearless color choices

B) Bad taste

C) Being a rubber nose short of a clown's decorating sense.

Nevertheless, decorating is about one thing...

YOU.

Today's installment of

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hard Core Remodeling but Were Afraid to Ask!

is alllllll about color.

I learned early on that your vision may have a lot of shades to consider.

Tester size pots of paints and different swatches on the wall are a must.

Making the best of those splotches of paint,

say, around Halloween, shows your dedication.

The color eventually went up in my dining room...

...along with a chalkboard wall.
My inspiration was a BHG page I'd bookmarked,
plus the fact that my dining room butts up against my patio.

Our inspiration at the Rehab Remodel Condo?
A shower curtain!

But any color you love might just work.

Take your target colors to the paint store,
or just start fresh rifling through the chips.
If a couple in a color family interest you, take them all.

Once you've decided on the shades you think might work,
go back and have your selection of paint chips color matched.
We used Lowes for this, since I actually had chips from several
different stores.
Have each shade made into a small sample pot of paint.
Trust me.
You never know what a color is going to be like in your home until it's on the wall.
If you have a fear of painting the wall itself, paint some foam core board and tack it up.
For me though, it's wall or nothing.
I'm crazy like that.

ESPECIALLY if you're having an outside chip color matched,
ask the clerk in the paint department to put the UPC
for the formula she used on the sample.

Then when you go back, the next clerk can duplicate it easily.

Mark the intended rooms on the chips, and number the chips and samples to correspond.
We want this easy, right?

Now let's slap this stuff up on a vertical surface.

You want the splotches to be at least 2 feet square.
Put similar colors next to each other.


It's amazing how different a shade can look in different light.

Different times of the day also will effect how you feel about the color.

Got two rooms that converge with different samples?
Slap them up and try them out.

And this is a good time to experiment with borders and combinations.

Get bold.

Get crazy.

Get out of town.
This is too strange even for me.

And that's why I do this.
Think of it as dating a color, because you'll be married
to it for a long, long time.

Live with the splashes for a couple of days.
Made your decision?
Mark the winners with a pencil.

I think we've got our pallet.

So let's go get some more paint, shall we?