Choosing paint colors

For future reference, when you're completely changing the color that a room is painted, it's a good idea to try out the paint before investing in five gallons of non-returnable paint. HOWEVER, if you're going to throw caution to the wind and not try out small amounts of paint first, then Home Depot is a great place to buy paint, as they'll try their best to make you happy by re-tinting what you bought.

Which leads me to one thing we did today--we tried out the two colors of paint purchased yesterday. The light brown for the bedrooms:
There actually is more contrast than the picture shows. I'd have gone darker, but the rooms are quite small, and mom likes light ;)


Then we tried the green (for the living/dining area and the hall):
Can you see it? Exactly. Almost no contrast, and in fact, it looked decidedly MINTY! This was not what we wanted--we were going for sage-y.

So after an hour or so at Home Depot, the paint guy was able to achieve:
(the darker spot, painted right below the original, light one). The photos are not very accurate, but it really is a very pretty color!

In addition to testing out the colors, G. finished painting all the doors with the semi-gloss white:
I am in the process of soaking all the hardware in Mr. Clean (read about that online) to get off the stain, varnish, and latex paint that had been dripped on them in previous remodels.

We also did some more outside work--although much of that was on OUR yard, since the plants we'd had up against the fence would look very silly with no fence there anymore! So we moved some pachysandra and irises, and hauled some more dirt and mulch into the arbor vitae holes.

Tomorrow Mom heads up North with all three kids, so G. and I are hoping to get much of what we can do on our own done (painting, and getting the bedrooms "put together").