Albemarle Reno

When we closed on our house in mid-October, choosing paint colors for the walls was about the furthest thing from my mind, bested only by the question of which would be the spice drawer in my non-existent kitchen. However, Intrepid Architect urged that it’s never too soon to be thinking about color, and one autumn afternoon she presented us with these fading hydrangea blooms from the front yard.

The gray, green, red palette really resonated with us and resembled the palette chosen by who-knows-who many years ago when s/he chose these vestibule tiles

the coincidental similarity of these two palettes led us to our final color choices for the first floor entry hall, parlors and dining room.

For paint brand, we went with Benjamin Moore. I looked into the fancier lines — the magnetic pull toward Farrow and Ball was strong, what with their deeply saturated “colours” and all, but the desire to be able to afford to paint all the rooms in the house proved stronger.

Intrepid Architect was our Ouija Board of color consultation. The needs and possibilities of each room spoke to us through her expertise — as did the potential consequences of each choice. She took the palette of the hydrangea and tiles and pulled out a range of choices in each color-way and we looked at the swatches taped up on the walls. In addition to wall colors, there were ceilings and trims to consider.

So let’s start with the entry hall – for the walls we chose #HC-111 Nantucket Gray

The paint crew had their work cut out for them, repairing holes in the walls from a full-house electric rewire

The hallway on all floors had also been given this stucco-style wall treatment by some former owner

Large swaths of it were badly cracked, damaged, and the topographical map-like texture was not to our taste. A huge portion of our budget was allocated to repairing the plaster and skim coat — I understand after seeing the process why it was money well spent — the evolution is below.

Our entry hall in its pre-purchase state:

Prepping

Painted

Another angle, below

All the stucco smoothed out nicely too

We bumped the color to a more saturated green for the entry hall ceiling, choosing #509 Cypress Green

I don’t know where the idea came from, but I’ve always wanted red on the dining room ceiling — but Mr. Albe’s neutral sensibilities were reluctant to throw his support behind this bold choice. Then, serendipitously, the new HBO show Boardwalk Empire filmed some scenes here in February, transforming our parlors into a brothel, and painted the walls red

Without seeing it on the walls for the land of make-pretend, I don’t know if we’d have made the leap to go with so much red. But that preview sealed the deal, though we went with a shade a touch less pink, #1281 Tawny Port. For the ceiling we used the Entry Hall wall color, #HC-111 Nantucket Gray

Here’s the Front Parlor upon purchase

Then it got the Boardwalk Empire treatment,

was prepped

and painted

You’ll notice the painted woodwork went from white to brown. Boardwalk Empire made that change and we went with the same color #1253 Fresco Urbain. The production’s aim was to make it look more like wood, and maybe it’ll read that way on camera. We know there’s little chance anyone visiting us will mistake the painted surface for a wood stain, but we thought the darker color helped to marry the two parlors, the second of which has woodwork with a deep, rich stain, shown below (with view into the Front Parlor)

We plan to use the two parlors together for entertaining and playing music, so we carried the wall and ceiling colors through both rooms. Here’s how the second parlor (dubbed the Music Room) turned out:

Here it is pre-purchase

And after painting

We carried the #1281 Tawny Port from the parlor walls on over to the dining room ceiling — and since there’s very little wall to paint between the built-ins and other woodwork, chose Dark Walnut to complement the wood without really making too much of its own statement.

The crown molding colors took some time to sort out — here’s the “before:”

We knew we wanted it to be more than one color, but where to stop? The opportunities for pulling out detail seemed endless — it was impossible for us to make a decision without seeing the colors next to each other in different combinations. So Intrepid Architect got some pots of paint and painted by number

and the winner is the combo on the left-most side of the photo below

I put the numbers on the crown parts to make it clear which color went where

and we went from this

to this

Here’s the rest of the dining room transformation

We’re really pleased about how it all turned out. Unfortunately the dining room is currently slumming as one of our provisional kitchens — humiliated by our microwave

and our use of its grand built-ins for pantry space

But we’re still roughly 5 weeks away from having a functional kitchen so that’s just the way it has to be. We’re just glad to be here, living daily with the choices we made so many months ago.