Biography of Westinmoreland House

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January 29, 2006

A Dilemma Perhaps Solved?

I have been perplexed at how I was going to go about painting the living room. The reason being it is open to the kitchen. The original owner had a wall between the two rooms, but later the wall was removed and now we have an open kitchen/living room area. I had toyed previously with the idea of stenciling a border around the windows in the kitchen. The living room area does not have a window, only the front door. However we are hoping to later add a window that goes around the sides of the door. Anyway I never did stencil around the kitchen, but I did paint the kitchen a cheery warm yellow with white trim. It?s a solid yellow and very pronounced. I always wanted the walls of my living room to be a warm shade of red. However I knew being the two rooms have no boundary beside a beam that goes between them, they would fight for attention and be way too pronounced. So after looking at several colonial/early American style interiors, I think I have a solution. A solution, that would allow me to keep my red color for the living room and not fight with the yellow kitchen. I am thinking of wainscoting the bottom half of the room and then painting it red along with any molding around the ceiling, windows, and doors. Thus allowing the walls to stay white(ish). However I was thinking of doing some stenciling around the molding, with period stencil designs. The more I think about it the better I like that idea. Just for visualization, here are some examples of what I am thinking of doing

Now I don?t exactly like the ?country? theme, but I do like something that really echoes the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I have to run it by my husband and see what he thinks, but I think it?s a smooth transition for the two rooms.