Several years ago, we added on to our house. What had been our deck, became our family room. I made a critical error when we added on, and that was letting the contractor talk me out of something that I really wanted. I had requested white trim and windows in the room. The rest of our house still had oak woodwork everywhere, but I had a vision in my head, and that was to eventually change it all to white. I love the look of white woodwork.
Anyway, he thought I was insane, because everything in my house was oak. So I caved. Take my advice. Don't cave. Hold your ground.
This is how things looked many moons ago. We don't even have that furniture anymore. Anyway, I painted the walls AND the ceiling yellow. Emphasis on the YELL. It kind of smacked you in the face every time you walked in the room. And that room has extremely high vaulted ceilings.
Fast forward about seven or eight years and my vision has finally come to fruition. (Love that word.) Scott actually suggested we get the woodwork painted, because just like the vision in my head, we had changed all of the woodwork on the rest of the first floor to white. White windows, white doors, white cabinets...all so clean and bright and happy. Except the addition. I would have lived with it, because I'm cheap like that and I was not going to tackle that job myself. There are twelve huge windows in that room plus a glass door. It would have taken me years. It took the painter and his crew two days. They actually removed all of the windows and wrapped the house in plastic in case it rained. All of the wood got a nice oil-based paint on it so nothing sticks. It's the same paint they used on my kitchen cabinets. I love it.
I chose a nice gray-blue for the walls. "Tradewind" by Sherwin Williams. I just like the name, I say it every once in awhile when I walk in the room. "Tradewind..." And I had the ceiling painted white. Ahhhhh. So much better.
I also switched up my gallery wall. It used to be mostly floral pictures. Scott said, "Can we get rid of the flowers?" Happy to oblige. I just used things I had on hand. Now, it's three watercolor prints of old ships that I found in an antique store in California years and years ago (shopping with two of my favorite people to antique with - Mom and Barbara Diamond) and pictures of the kids. And my homemade stick fish. I thought ships and fish kind of went with the Tradewind theme... My kids, well, that's just eye candy right there.
I can actually feel my blood pressure go down when I walk in there - it's a very calming place. Tradewind, tradewind, tradewind...
