A Skirmish Won

I have spent the last few days admiring my new wall. I have been doing some excellent procrastinating on my writing by dealing with renos to the cottage.

The house came with the following colour scheme:

The black trim makes me feel like the house is wearing too much eyeliner. Plus, I find it attracts and arrests the eye, drawing attention to the window frames, as opposed to the view outside. Said view is marvelous, and I'd rather my eyes ultimately came to rest there. The green and terra cotta colours are meant to match the arbutus (madrona) tree outside the main window. I'm not sure what the fuschia in the bedroom is meant to go with.

So after living with the colours for a year while we did other needed maintenance, we finally declared war on the black trim. Here is the result of our first skirmish:

My working premise is that on sunny days the blue is close to the colour of the sky, which will trick the eye into thinking the wall is part of the background, hopefully making the place seem bigger. On rainy days, the blue will remind me of sunny days. The white trim is just fresh. Plus, Guy also changed the trim style to something simpler, cleaner, and in my opinion more cottage-y. We removed some wacky trim that was around the beams, and plastered instead, which also makes things much cleaner.

The house will probably look a bit like a rainbow while we slowly tackle each wall. But for now, I'm really happy with how Stage 1 turned out.

[Edited 3 PM]: For the curious, we used Benjamin Moore's Aura paint. It's low VOC, and has the added bonus that a second coat can be applied in 1 hour. Self-priming, too, so only two coats were needed for complete coverage. Since it dries so fast, you have to be careful not to work it too much with the brush or it will "lift", but I still found it easier to use than the other brand I touched up the guest room with this spring. It levels really well.

Those sliding doors will also look a little classier once we re-install the inner french doors. Which had also been painted black, and which we spent a good week stripping back down to bare wood so we could apply a natural stain to show off the lovely grain of the fir. They look fantastic and I can't wait until they're back in their frame.