A friend reached out to me with a design dilemma. In answering her, I thought it might be fun to share these questions and answers here in case other readers have similar dilemmas. She is a 30-ish mother of three young kids living in Indiana. And she loves design. Her questions have been edited for length and clarity.
Design Dilemma #1
My blue living room wall is an accent wall. I wonder if it makes the room feel dated instead of timeless, or maybe the navy blue with white trim makes it look dated.
My response: Trends come and go. The key to discerning if something makes a room feel dated is to look at the room. Look at all the details and see if they all perfectly correspond with a particular moment and time, like a movie set. That is where the dated feeling comes from.
You seem to be asking more about following a trend than how a specific color looks in a particular room. So I’d like to respond to that.
What’s in a trend?
Great design will take from an array of periods because great home design has a curated look, items collected over time that somehow fit together. The unifying factor may not be as apparent as the color scheme, metal finish or a catchy name like farmhouse chic.
While it’s true that the accent wall had quite a moment in the earlier 2000s, it can still be done without looking dated. But here’s the catch. People often painted an accent wall because they were afraid to paint the entire thing some wild, dramatic color. Four bold walls went against the grain of the longstanding minimalist trend that we are in now and have been for some time since Fixer-Upper came on the scene.
Ask yourself, why do you have the accent wall?
Was it because you thought a navy blue room would be too much? Or because you wanted to make this a focal feature and minimize the rest of the room? Those questions can help you know whether or not this is dated or part of the bigger picture of a home designed with the things you love.
Design Dilemma #2
I’ve noticed that previous owners have painted the window trim over and over. I want to paint the trim, but do I need to sand them? Is it a must to make it clean? Same with our doors. Do I need to sand them or use paint thinner? I want to make quickish updates, but it may add to the layers of paint look, but sanding will take forever.
My response: Oh yes, paint over paint over paint. There comes a time when something must eventually be stripped away. Because imperfections in the paint grow with each layer, you will never get that smooth, clean look when there have been too many layers or poorly done paint jobs.
While I have yet to restore trim, Marian Parsons from the Miss Mustard Seed blog has some great advice. She writes, “You can strip off a paint finish manually (through sanding) or chemically (through strippers.) There isn’t a right or wrong way to remove the paint. It depends on the desired end result and which kind of mess you prefer.” In a recent project, Parsons began with an orbital using finer grit (120-220) sandpaper and alternated between that and a chemical stripper. She recommended the paste stripper Ready Strip. Check out her blog for more detailed instructions and recommendations.
But your question isn’t just about how to do it, but what to do.
With wood, you can take the paint down to a preferred degree or all the way to clean wood. If you’re repainting it, you really don’t need to take it back to its tree-like state.
The same goes for the door. How bad is the paint? Can a little sanding knock it down, or do you have time to do the whole project the “right way?”
It’s all a cost-benefit analysis—cost factors in both financial and time costs. I wish I could write this as a math equation, but I studied psychology instead.
- How much do you hate the way it looks now?
- How much work does it take to achieve the desired outcome?
- Can we do the work ourselves, or is it outside our skill set?
- Do we have time to do what we know how to do/learn a new skill and do it?
- How much does it cost to pay another person?
- What materials are involved, and are they worth the effort of restoration?
I cannot tell you the correct answer, but overspending on time or money will not be it. Sometimes the answer is a shortcut in the project now and patience for the long haul when there is more time and money.
No right or wrong…exactly
The critical thing to remember is that over time, there isn’t a wrong decision for these little projects because your paint can be stripped away just as quickly as the previous owners.
In a total renovation, you must make priority lists and consider these questions, ranking the projects accordingly. It’s a long and thoughtful process that will help guide you on where to save and splurge.