h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

About a year ago I had the intention of painting the flat I had just moved into. It hadn't been decorated for at least a decade, maybe two decades, as best as I could tell.

I was sure I didn't want it to be depressingly beige. But was sure of little else with regard to how best to give my flat a make-over.
Eventually the following paints were bought:

Kitchen - Eastern Glow. A kind of burnt orange colour.
Bedroom - Light grey with a kind of rich, deep blue/purple kinda colour on the window facing wall.
Bathroom - Ionian Sea. A 'lilac-blue'.
Living Room - Manuscript for the wall opposite the windows and Bone for the others. Which I guess you could call blood red and a kinda maybe off-white colour.
Corridor - Spearmint. Which is more of a white than a pale green.

Now, due to lack of confidence in my ability to paint my walls without bumming it up, and as such, leaving me with a mess to have live with, [somewhat re-inforced by the result getting on with doing the skirting board and doors,] no friends to call on to lend helping hand, apathy and probably laziness too, only the walls of the corridor were painted. And, over time, I also had doubts about the choice of colours I had made. Were there too many colours for one little flat? I have no sense of aesthetics especially in regard to home decorating. Would a grey room be depressing? Was the quality of matt emulsion good enough? Had the period of time the paint had spent sitting around not being put onto walls rendered such questions irrelevent?
Now, maybe these doubts were just excuses not to get on with the job. But as of Wednesday a profesional will be coming in a great expense [£3500] to do the work for me.
So, do I change the colour scheme? And, if I do, then what on to?

We're starting with the bathroom, kitchen and I will probably redo the corridor.
Although I like the sound of Ionian Sea for the bathroom, I come back to this fear I've grown of having an overwhelming myriad of colours in my little flat.
I don't know what I want.

I kinda think I should call the whole thing off and paint with what I have and see how badly or not turns out. But that's what I should have done in the last year when I had plenty of oppertunity.
I don't have three and a half grand to throw at my laziness.

I know I want to avoid beige and magnolia still.
I've decided that grey rooms would be depressing.
That purple risks being oppresive [and black just is].
That I hate yellow rooms.
I wouldn't like gold.
I don't know that I'd like orange.
Violets and mauves are where I 'colour blind'.
I don't want a red kitchen.

I'm left with a tame white everywhere.

Someone please give me an alternative perspective to trigger some contructive thinking.

And with decorator in and all my money going to him I probably won't be going to this...
http://www.skeptic.org.uk/pub/

If you are scared of all those colours even in theory, you may go totally loopy living with them in practice is my opinion.

Have you actually bought the paint & paid the painter? If not, personally i would save that horrendouly large amount of dosh, leave the damn place white or magnolia & get yerself loads of nice posters, rugs, anything you like to hang on the walls. Try car boot sales, great fun, cheap, loads of interesting stuff & you get chatting to people too.

You can commission me to make you a cheesebox if you like, much cheaper than the decorator & it's a one off artwork!

I don't have a choice, it's a rented house, white or white are the options, but i have half a ton of stuff on the walls. The kitchen section is vaguely blue & yellow, bedroom is vaguely reddish, living area is a mish mash of whatever, bathroom is a total joke as to colour; it doubles as the library & right now has a cat sleeping in the sink.

As for the atélier, the walls are completely covered with weird objects, so it's really very hard to tell what colour they are!

Now dear, stop being silly about this. It's a living space; make it nice & comfy for YOU not the rest of the world. You don't have to paint the whole damn place at once; that's a pain. If you get a desperate urge for a blue wall or whatever; fine. Move the furniture, buy the paint & brushes, cover the floor with an old sheet & go for it. Painting walls is incredibly UNdifficult.

Unless it's the Sistine Chapel.....

zdt

She speaks a lot of sense, that Terri woman.

If you can't face painting and you don't like the walls, hide 'em.

Personally, I think the colours you've got sound really good. Besides, you'd only see one or two of them at a time, because you'd only be in one room at a time. The last house I was in had a different colour for each room, and it worked very well.

If getting someone else to do the whole sodding thing will give you a sense of relief, then get them to do it.

If you're worried about the money, call it off or get them to do one room (and watch how they do it).


Tips for painting that I've picked up via my obsession with DIY shows:

1. Paint as and when you feel like slapping paint about: don't think about finishing the job.

2. If the old colour is dark enough to show through, buy a tin of undercoat and put that on first.

3. If you're using a brush, paint in long strokes up and down. (Never side-to-side or diagonal.)

4. If you're using a roller, you can slap the paint on any old way and it'll look good; but they are nigh-on impossible to clean afterwards, so you may never be able to use it for more than one paint-job.

5. Use that paper masking-tape to get edges looking tidy.

6. If your coat of paint looks patchy, call it a textural effect and pretend it was intentional.

7. It's always darker on the wall than it looks in the tin or sample patch.

Oh, yeah:

8. Matt emulsion is best for walls. Gloss or satin are often used for doors, frames, etc, because they're prone to getting grubby and need to be wipe-cleanable.

And year-old paint is fine. If it has separated, give it a stir and it's good to go.

*Puzzled*

But i thought doorframes were supposed to be grubby, isn't that what gives them character?

Found a great kilim in the street yesterday, it will go nicely on the wall up the stairs.

zdt

I hope it's housetrained.

I didn't make it to the Skeptics in a Pub thing, which is a real shame 'cause I really wanted to hear what this defender of the teaching of ID in schools had to say. But the trains and tubes werre in chaos I think the heat did it for a rail or something. Oh well, there's a talk each month.

Having this guy in to do the work for me, I'm trying to view as a positive. In as much as I can see what being done and done quite well and hopefully have the confidence to to it all for myself should the need arise.

Still tis gonna cost about £500 quid more than previously thought.

I've slapped a bit of each paint on the wall-paper in the livingroom, I don't think much of the Ionian Sea, far too lilac for my tatstes.
The lit grey is indifferent and dull. And the purple seems oppressive as I had feared. The Eastern Glow is nicer than I had feared. The red isn't quite how I expected, but I like it. And the bone I like even if it's possibly in the neutral/magnolia spectrum. And I've always liked the Spearmint.

Not sure what I'll put in the bathroom instead of Ionian Sea. I actually like the idea of a 'cool' rather than 'warm' colour' in there as I want to have a fresh and clean feel to it. Though I know most go for something warm, like 'peach' or watery, like blue.
The Spearmint is a 'cool' colour. What I may do is have spearmint in the bathroom and hallway and Manuscript red and bone in the living and bed rooms. And the Glow in Kitchen.

But who knows, eh? I am terribly indecisive.

Just bought an 5 litres of spearmint to do the bathroom and hallway with as it occured to me that the one litre I had left wasn't going to cut it.

Might get some claypaint for the rest of the rooms when there time comes.

SPEARMINT? My good man, you should be using PAINT.

Hoom.
What am going to do with all those I bought.