Uptown: Priming with PARA Paints

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I am happy to report that I making progress on the painting projects in my house. (I wish I could say the same about some of the decisions that I still have to make.) The hallways were a dark deep red and the kitchen was a dark brown so I felt like the walls in these spaces needed to be primed before I painted them white. The walls were all in great shape so I didn’t do anything besides wipe them down. I probably should have lightly sanded the walls but I usually just skip the sanding step if the walls are in good shape. Tsk, tsk, right?

I used PARA Paints professional latex primer* for this job and it worked beautifully. It went on smoothly and covered the dark walls very well.

Here’s a look at the upstairs hall. The ceiling is super high and luckily my dad brought his 21′ ladder and was brave enough to deal with the high points.

White-Cabana+ParaPaints

Anyway – the place is so much brighter now that the hallways have been primed with white. I am so excited about the transformation that my townhouse is going through.

* Thanks to PARA Paints for their support.  

Uptown: Testing out the Paint

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Painting is almost – almost – going to begin. I will start with PARA primer on some of the walls…

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PARA primer

I have narrowed down my paint colours from about a thousand different white. While some people have told me…

11_9_09via You Look Like the Right Type

I know that no two whites are the same. I am now deciding between two colours. The first option is Chantilly Lace. This is a favourite white among many designers and has been featured in countless home magazines and blogs. In my home it looks quite good.

Chantilly-Lace

 Chantilly Lace

The second option is Behr’s Gallery White. It also looks good in various rooms in my home.

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Gallery White

I decided to buy small cans of each colour so I could test them out in every room in my house. The paint clerk at the Home Depot pretty much laughed at me when she showed me the two colours after she mixed them. My friends did the same. Why I have to convince everyone that the two colours are really different is beyond me.

So this past weekend I painted two coats of each colour in various rooms around my house. I think this strategy will help me decide the final colour but it’s also a bit tricky because I didn’t prime and the colours underneath surely impact the way that I see the whites. The photo collage below gives you an idea of the differences although the lighting combined with the Instagram filter doesn’t give you a true sense of the shades.

paint-White-Cabana

Chantilly Lace (on top or on the left in every photo) + Gallery White (on the bottom or on the right in every photo)

I’d prefer to paint the whole house one colour but I may end up getting cans of both colours and just alternating the rooms. Ha ha…let’s see who would actually notice besides me!