Shannon and I took a trip down to Washington, DC this past weekend, both sets of parents in tow, to try to get some painting done on the new house. We painted our current place in Brookline after we moved in, and it took forever (what with needing to move furniture around, and having to time everything so that rooms were available when we needed to use them), so our aim was to avoid that by getting the painting done before we moved down to DC. We were lucky that everything had recently been painted in a white latex by the seller, so we didn't need to do any priming of the walls, and didn't have to do anything to the ceilings or trim for now.

Shannon and her mother put a lot of time and effort into choosing the colors, from amassing about a thousand paint chip strips from various stores to carrying swatches around with them of our just-purchased new sofa and chair to painting entire posterboards with colors that were in consideration (so that they could hold them up against everything and get a better sense of how things would work together). I have to say that the posterboard idea was pure genius; colors that looked fine on the little paint chips from the store looked terrible against the floors and countertops once they were painted onto larger areas, and it really took the bigger sample to get a sense of what would work. Going down to DC, we had only made one firm color choice (for the upstairs and downstairs hallways and the guest bedroom) and had a handful of posterboards ready to be tested in their respective rooms, so we were a little nervous about not having enough time to get everything done. In the end, though, the "probable" colors all tested perfectly, everything ended up available from the same paint company (Benjamin Moore), and everyone was knocked out by how great things came out once the paint was on the walls.

Starting in the front of the house, we painted the dining room and living room in a bright yellow (Goldtone). We originally started out with Restoration Hardware's Butter, having painted Shannon's study here in Brookline in the color and loving it, but the posterboard tester looked terrible against the teak floors and was too vivid against the new sofa and chair fabrics. Shannon and her mother spent a chunk of time with small paint chips, chose a few options to test on a larger scale, and ended up with Goldtone, and it looks awesome in both rooms.

Headed to the back of the house, we wanted to do a tan or beige kitchen, but knew that our marble countertops would make it hard to find a color that didn't clash too terribly. We didn't really have a good starting point for this, but throwing around words like "taupe-y", the ladies again made a few choices and landed on Tucson Tan. (Hysterically, Shannon found herself unable to avoid saying "Toucan Sam" every time she tried to tell someone the paint name, so that's what it's now known as to us.) And while the countertops were the prime mover on the color choice, it also works well with the teak, as well as with the cherry cabinets. In contrast to all the other rooms, we went with a matte finish in the kitchen, as Benjamin Moore advertises it as scrubbable for easier cleaning.

Moving around and up, we knew that we wanted to keep the entryway, hallways, stairs, and guest bedroom pretty simple and easy. To us, that meant going with Linen White, the same paint that we used for more than three-quarters of our home here in Brookline. It's a nice, soft white that tends to take on a warm glow in natural light, and it's also one of the off-whites that Benjamin Moore paint stores stock on their shelves by the truckload. In the picture, the color looks a little greener than it really is; you'll see why that is in the next room.

When you come up the stairs, you're facing our little half-room, which we've taken to calling the "pygmy room." It's going to be our office, and our color starting point was the Restoration Hardware Silver Sage that we used for my office here in Brookline, a color we've liked a lot. Again, though, the Silver Sage was way off when put against the floors upstairs, so a few more choices made it onto posterboard testers. We ended up with Dried Parsley, and I have to say that it came out good enough that this is my current favorite room in the house. (The room is also the most electrically-enabled, with four different circuits, for reasons we can't even begin to guess.)

Finally, we end up in the master bedroom, which was one of the most difficult because of all the competing things we wanted to match. Between the beige-to-ash carpets and our many-variations-on-red bedding, we thought that a color like Manchester Tan might work, but once again, it looked terrible when Shannon tested it out. In another southwestern nod, the winner ended up being Tucson Winds, which came out awesomely.

We started painting around noon on Saturday, and were ecstatic that we were able to get everything done by around 4 PM on Sunday (again, the beauty of not having to paint the trim or ceilings). We had a few painters' tape issues that I'll talk about some other time, but when all's said and done, the house looks amazing and we were sad to have to come back to Brookline for a few more weeks.