Decorating Deja Vu

[Bonny]

I'm in the process of painting most of the interior of my house. Maybe I'm just easily amused but I find it a little ironic that I'm repeating past painting iterations of former owners. For example while patching a portion of the window sill I noticed that it had been painted a pretty blue-green color which is very similar to what I have in mind for that as an accent wall.

The kitchen was painted a pale yellow which is similar to what I painted the kitchen.

The most ironic is using the same Swiss Coffee (off-white) color that the owner prior to us painted the interior of the house. When we were moving to AZ ten years ago I picked a different white thinking I wanted a white-white interior. Now I'm using the same color as the prior owner did 20 years ago. Since I'm lazy I didn't paint the bedroom closets before we left. Now I only have to do one coat over the old one.

My house is 50 years old and we're only the third owner so it's not as interesting an archeological dig as some other homes. What have you found in your home which gives yourself a feeling of deja vu?

[moneymaven]

I never changed the paint in our house when we bought it, except in DS' room (when I became pregnant 2.5 years after we bought the house). I loved the colors the prior owners used and I've just touched it up where needed.

I did paint the exterior of the house following a storm. The house was plain white before, so I changed the roof color, the exterior, the shutters and the front door. We keep in touch with the prior owners and they love how the house looks now.

[Bonny]

Our house was very, very plain when we bought it. Off-white interior and light tan exterior. I suspect that her agent (whom we adored) made sure that everything was "neutralized".

Being cheap, we didn't change that much unless we had to until we moved back in after renting out the house for 9 years.

LOL, if the bathroom cabinets didn't need to be replaced due to water leaks we'd probably still have the very neutral original 60s Formica countertops in the bathrooms.

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

My previous home had an "eggshell" white in all rooms. (slightly more muted than 'standard' white).

Window frames/baseboards were oak.

I could "color" each room with different fabrics/upholstery and artwork.

I mostly stuck with "earth-tones - beiges/browns/hunter green, rust etc. in the main living area (living room/family room/den/kitchen. Appliances in kitchen were almond/black.

The place I'm in now has a more "dusty peach" colored paint thoughout with white ceilings and a darker 'coffee' colored wide border trim around the ceilings.

I can still use the "earth-tone" colors to coordinate - I've added dark cranberry to the mix of accent colors to go with it all. It feels "homey and warm".

[motherto2]

Last summer I decided that the faux treatment I had done on my bedroom  walls over ten years ago needed to go. I had been wanting to repaint it for some time, but my bedroom is fairly large, and I kept putting it off.  I go through these phases where I need to do some DIY, so that was my project of choice finally.  I love green, browns, tans in my home.  I have a huge cathedral ceiling wall in my great room that is painted dark green, and the rest of the downstairs is a tannish color.  Not as dark as I would have liked, but the then husband wouldn't let me go any darker (that's another project I'd love to tackle, but that's a huge undertaking and I'd have to get help getting the really high places because I can't do ladders anymore - too much vertigo).  So, I kept trying different colors on the wall, and just couldn't decide on one.  I looked like I had a patchwork motif going on while doing the different swatches on different walls.  I finally came to a green that I loved, so I finally tackled it.  I love the new color.  After I painted it and saw the finished product, I was having this deja vu feeling.  I finally realized that the color I chose was very similar to the color my grandparents had on their great room walls (that's without having them side by side to compare them).  I thought that was awfully ironic, because I never really cared much for their paint choice when I was a kid.  I've come full circle I guess  because I would LOVE to get one of those silver Christmas trees that had the circling color wheel pointed towards it - my grandparents had one forever when I was growing up.  I've been looking for one for a few years, and so far no luck

[Tiny]

My house came with a very 'busy' kitchen - turquoise over the black capped white tile walls (there's an accent of maroon tile as well.) the fridge alcove and built in shelf alcove were pea green. There was some orange-y rooster/farm wall paper on the area above the cabinets. I think turquoise and pea green were always the color scheme (late '40s era house). I think the wall paper got added in the 70s. I couldn't cope with the screaming colors so painted it a white to match the tiles. Oddly enough turquoise is back in style (thanks Martha Stewart!) and I have considered painting the kitchen that turquoise-y blue again (no pea green this time - maybe a darker accent blue instead).

The bathroom was the best archeological dig - the bathroom has the same white tile capped in black but with a line of black/white textured tile as an accent (it's original for the late 40's). above that the most current layer was a nasty black/gold fleck swirling mess of a patterned wall paper - that took me hours and hours and hours to remove. Under that was dark grey paint, under the dark grey was Flamingo Pink and under the Flamingo Pink was some sort of bright glossy white. I painted the bathroom a white to match the tiles and the Flamingo Pink kept bleeding thru. I had to put a coat of Kilz (a sealer) on and then repainted. I spent more time getting the bathroom 'neutral' than I did painting the rest of the house.

The bedrooms were blue and pink and hadn't been painted probably in 40 years. (yep, lead paint - don't lick the walls!<-- ok, yeah, I know it the dust from the walls when the paint is damaged that's the problem). The blue bedroom remained blue and the pink room became yellow.

The dinning room/living room were another example of 1950's decorating. Under a more modern "dusty rose/pink" paint is a layer of that mustard/yellow color that goes with turquoise and flamingo pink.    I saw no indications of other colors below the mustard/yellow color.   The living room drapes were a million years old - predated the dusty rose/pink paint and would have gone great with the mustard/yellow color.  So, it's possible the livingroom was always a yellow color.

I repainted the 'pink' to a lighter blush color cause I thought that looked nice with the bright southern light the two rooms get.

I'll be repainting this spring summer - and I have to admit I'm considering a version of the mustardy-yellow for the living room/dinning room. Yellow is my favorite color so I'm sure that plays into it. The bedrooms will probably stay in the theme of blue and yellow. The bath is gonna stay white that matches the tiles. I dress it up with a window curtain and a shower curtain and towels.

[jinksd1]

The archeological dig comment brings back memories.  Our house is over a century old, so we've run into bits and pieces of information about it while renovating.  While scraping off wallpaper that the previous owner put up, I often found other wallpaper underneath it.  At one place in the foyer, the wallpaper took off chunks of wall in one spot, all the way down to the bare original plaster.  I could tell that it had been originally painted red, then covered with a dark navy wallpaper with a very old-fashioned turn-of-the-century floral design, then more layers of paint and more modern wallpapers.  More to your topic, the original red paint made me smile, because we had already painted the living and dining rooms (right off the foyer) an almost identical shade of red as the original owners painted their foyer over 100 years ago.

When a previous owner replaced the front door, they had to remove a highly decorative piece of original woodwork over the door, which we found laid across the rafters in the garage.  I'm thinking of using it in some cool way in the future, but I haven't gotten around to it.

The basement was interesting, because it showed where a set of stairs used to be before it was closed off.  We also found two cases of unopened 30-year old wine in the basement.  Yes, we drank it, and yes, it was good!  There were also wooden crates like things used to come in back in the olden days, complete with the name of the manufacturer or product on the sides.

We actually met with the previous owners of our house a couple years after we bought it, and they got to tour the house and tell us some interesting things about its history.  We also looked up information in the city and county archives to learn more, and they had some old photos of the house, as well as showing us that a road used to exist on one side of the house that has now been blocked off and turned into a dead end. Actually, it's the road that faces the front of the house, so originally our house had a different address with a different street name.

Sorry, I know that isn't exactly what you were taking about.  I'm easily excitable about the history of our house. 

[Bonny]

Jan 26, 2014 20:24:26 GMT -5 jinksd1 said:

The archeological dig comment brings back memories.  Our house is over a century old, so we've run into bits and pieces of information about it while renovating.  While scraping off wallpaper that the previous owner put up, I often found other wallpaper underneath it.  At one place in the foyer, the wallpaper took off chunks of wall in one spot, all the way down to the bare original plaster.  I could tell that it had been originally painted red, then covered with a dark navy wallpaper with a very old-fashioned turn-of-the-century floral design, then more layers of paint and more modern wallpapers.  More to your topic, the original red paint made me smile, because we had already painted the living and dining rooms (right off the foyer) an almost identical shade of red as the original owners painted their foyer over 100 years ago.

When a previous owner replaced the front door, they had to remove a highly decorative piece of original woodwork over the door, which we found laid across the rafters in the garage.  I'm thinking of using it in some cool way in the future, but I haven't gotten around to it.

The basement was interesting, because it showed where a set of stairs used to be before it was closed off.  We also found two cases of unopened 30-year old wine in the basement.  Yes, we drank it, and yes, it was good!  There were also wooden crates like things used to come in back in the olden days, complete with the name of the manufacturer or product on the sides.

We actually met with the previous owners of our house a couple years after we bought it, and they got to tour the house and tell us some interesting things about its history.  We also looked up information in the city and county archives to learn more, and they had some old photos of the house, as well as showing us that a road used to exist on one side of the house that has now been blocked off and turned into a dead end. Actually, it's the road that faces the front of the house, so originally our house had a different address with a different street name.

Sorry, I know that isn't exactly what you were taking about.  I'm easily excitable about the history of our house. 

I love the history of old houses. One of DH's cousins owned a house wherein the main part of the house was built in the 1650s. I just loved crawling around checking out the 4 square chimneys, where the various additions were added, the conversion of bedrooms to bathrooms and so on.

The oldest property we own is the condo which was built in 1959. Very mid-century modern. Tiny's colors are on the mark. I never saw it before my mother remodeled it but I would have LOVED a turquoise and black tiled bathroom.