Name: Andrea T.
Location: Boston, MA
Why I use color:
"I have come to terms with my color phobia, thanks to my kindergartner. Paint is easily changed and has the greatest impact for the cost (very important!) Plain, practical furniture fits in such a tiny room but will grow with my son and the many inevitable paint jobs. The mood of the room is then set by the wall color and pattern. He is energized in his space and lets his imagination run wild. The color has since spilled out into every other room in the house, the greater the saturation the better!"
Color Tips:
"1. Always test the paint on the walls first rent a quart! The light changes the colors dramatically from day to night, even room to room!
2. When using saturated colors in a small space, balancing lights and darks can visually increase size.
3. If you can get your hands on a pantone color book, it makes shopping for other colors easier because you always have your color to shop against."
Color Resources:
"1. tacky as it is- www.behr.com it has many tools for playing with colors, but their paint stinks!
2. my newest online obsession is Colorlovers.com a neat tool for color enthusiasts"
This is a very bold choice; it wouldn't work for the faint of heart. If one can live in this environment, I imagine one must have a calm temperament and a sturdy constitution. The room is a statement; it's daring; it's in-your-face. Again, not for the faint of heart.
I'll take my tykes less energized at bed-time, thanks. This would be cool in a used vinyl store, but at home? Not so much.
Andrea's child will never write a bitter memoir that starts with how his mother cruelly refused to decorate his room the way he wanted it.
I think this room is great for a little boy. I would have enjoyed growing up in it--up until my teen years, anwyway. It's like he gets to live in a playhouse. Good for you and your bold choices!
Those colors really pack a punch. What a lucky duck to have a room like that and a mom to go do all that work. I wish my mom did that to my childhood room.
I love that you painted the radiator pipe next to the desk to match the flames of the wall... little detail but well done!!
The lava lamps are the PERFECT accents for this room:) Wher they the inspiration for the flaming wall?
What's wrong with Behr paint?
I thought Consumer Reports just gave them a high rating.
Everybody seems to hate the Behr coverage -- poor quality, requires more coats of paint. Pros often refuse it. I tried it ages ago before I knew about any of that, and I went back to Benjamin Moore right away.
Wonder if they reformulated it?
BTW I have not found Consumer Reports all that helpful for that kind of household thing. I totally disagreed with their wood sealant evaluations....
(weird to write that)
So Andrea!
Great job!
How old is Zane? My mom made me (or should I say ALLOWED me to) do the work when I wanted to get weird with the bedroom walls way back when. I wish I had know Curtis back when I was a 10 year old taping off my designs...
This room is fantastic good fun, congratulations!
Makes me think it would be cool to have an 18-and-under competition in addition to a category of what parents have done for their kiddles.
Wow
Well, it wouldn't be my choice but I think it's great for a young boy - why not give him his dream room? Good for you.
Hey, I would have loved it if my parents had painted a fairy tale mural on my wall and given me a full-size princess bed, fluffy white rugs and beaded curtains. But alas, I got white walls, a practical wooden bunk bed, and interlubke shelving units. snore.
Aren't lights out at bedtime? I don't see how bright colors on the wall will affect how sleepy your kids get when you turn the lights out.
My parents painted my room violet at my request (begging) when I was about four and I will be eternally grateful for my cool purple room and cool parents. I think being surrounded by color is good for the mood and imagination.
Lucky little fellow! Cool Mom!
But how do you punish him, since "Go to your room!" definitely wouldn't work! :)
What a cool place to bring your friends back to hang out in! Again and again I am so impressed with people's bold use of color, as I am so afraid of it.
cool! when i was in jr. high school i was reading italian design magazines at the library. i came home wanting to paint my room glossy fire engine red with all yellow furniture. my folks talked me down from that and i ended up with a bright yellow room with glossy red furniture. i loved it. yellow is good.
That's a lucky kid who's mother allowed for the colors and painted this fun scheme! Just for all the bewildered comments (I do remember alot of complaints about beige and white entries), I gave her a blue ribbon vote! Like hair color, you can always change it.
Andrea T. You got my vote, give some aloha to Zane for us!
Cooking Cajun
Hi, I started in painting with Behr Paint from Home Depot and noticed I always had problems with it. In fact it is actually rather horrible. I used both the enamel primer and the enamel. The paint does not mix with itself and dries far too quickly. This results in horrible dry drips unless one is extremely careful--but in the latter case, running and drips are then a big threat.
The Behr interior enamel requires at least two coats to cover even white primer. This leaves a very thick, uneven coverage, and the inevitable dry drips make it even worse. It does not blend with itself, so all brush strokes from both coats will show.
Behr enamel peels and does not stick, even to Behr enamel primer. If you attempt to sand the dry drips off, the paint will peel as if it were plastic food wrap. It is not paint: but rather, it is some kind of cheap polymer chemical blend with pigment added.
Then I bought some paint from an Ace Hardware. It cost only $4 per gallon more, but only one coat is required in most cases, and it is very easy to work with.
Behr got the Home Depot concession somehow and is presently making a fortune selling poor quality paint at retail prices--mostly to people who are fixing up ugly rental apts, so they don't care how bad the paint is--some lackey is doing their painting. Home Depot charges about $22/gallon of Behr eenamel but it is really only worth about $10/gallon. Seriously.
I managed to paint one room and two doors with Behr before I finally decided I'd had enough. The one small room required five coats of Behr paint (2 gallons) and I had to sand all of the Behr paint off of one of the doors I did because it dissolved the door's original gray primer and turned grayish. Had to start over with a coat of white primer.
Stay away from Behr unless you want a lot of misery in your paint job. Behr will cost you a lot more in the long run, you'll spend at least twice as long doing the job, and the end result will look mediocre at best.
atay away from Behr. It's terrible to pain with. I bought the 5 gallon pail which should have done whole job. Now I have to get another 5 gallons -- but it will be another brand of pain color-matched. Even if not exact -- can't go through that again! Home Depot will not admit how many customers have complained and of course will not refund money after tint has been added. I am in Canada and five gallons Behr cost $172 after tax. Now I still have to buy more paint. Job would have been done at half the price and time with another brand.
I have owned two houses and currently building a new one. We used Behr Paint on the outside trim, porches, columns, facia, etc. When sun light is shining on the painted surfaces you can see unsightly lap marks. I have painted professionally in the past and my personal homes for thirty years. This is the first and last time I will use Behr Paint. This new house required 15 gallons of paint and over one month of painting.