you discovered why color selection is so time- and space-specific. You'll get the best end result if you prime your whole room grey before looking at color samples (you'll probably need to prime the room, anyway, right ?) That way no other significant color influencers will be present in the room. Light, surrounding colors, bounced colors, all affect the way our eyes/brain perceives color. The science of color is something most people dismiss but it works for��"or against��"you every time. I never select a color based on what I "like" but rather based on what goal I have for the space (high energy, seductive, calming, impressive) lighting, space and the adjacent colors/textures/surfaces. I giggle to myself (and sometimes out loud) when I see people in big box stores holding samples at arms length on a weekend morning to choose a color that will enrobe their room before the sun sets that evening. Then they complain that something was wrong with the color/paint/walls, etc. rather than look at the how and why of color science and their insufficient color selection process.

We flew from snowy Boston to warm Miami -- not for romance, but for school vacation week with our three kids. When we got to the hotel at almost 9 pm, we found that all the restaurants were booked, of course, so we ordered room service for dinner and ended up eating around 11 pm when we were all half asleep! My "romance" for the day -- we went out onto the balcony to admire our view, and when I turned around to walk back into the room, I walked RIGHT INTO the glass door. With my face, mostly. My top lip got cut and I was bleeding all over the place and my forehead had a big red egg. Not my finest moment. DH was so upset and ran and got me ice, was very attentive and sweet. This morning I guess it was also nice when he looked at me and said, "well, you don't look TOO bad." I look like I got some kind of injection in my upper lip.

Our cabinets were made by a local cabinet maker that works for our builder. The cabinets were delivered "raw" to our house and then finished on-site. I do not know what kind of original finish was applied to the natural maple but it was dispensed out of cans(think aerosol). From the moment we had the final walkthrough on the house, we questioned the finish on the wood. Some areas appeared to have no finish on them but we were told everything had been sprayed with several coats. Within 6 week of living in the house, the maple cabs and trim were starting to spot...white spots. The painter(different from the cabinet maker) returned to our home and did some sanding and more spraying. That looked OK for another few months but the problem returned again AND again. Eventually all of the window ledges were "white"...no finish left and very raw and damaged looking. We continued to complain to the builder who then turned the problem over to Sherwin Williams...the product supplier. Sherwin Williams sent a few cabinet doors to a lab and determined the problem was "product failure". A new contractor was sent in, did more sanding, and brushed all of the cabinets and trim with a lacquer product which made me assume the original products were not lacquer. Once again, it looked better but not great for awhile and then the finish began to disintegrate once again. At this point, we were so sick of this crap. The builder sent in ANOTHER contractor who supposedly specializes in restoration and we tossed out the idea of getting rid of the maple look and enameling everything. The builder went for it...not sure why...possibly because they truly had no idea what was wrong with our wood. And this new contractor told us it had been a terrible move for the cabinets to be brushed with lacquer. We then left our house for 2 weeks with no expense reimbursement(road trip for 2 weeks with 4 kids in a camper...that was fun) from the builder for the financial inconvenience but were hopeful we would return to something that looked nice and was durable. When we walked in the door after vacation, the work really did look nice until we started noticing things upon closer inspection. We have now had a few areas that have peeled down to the maple, the cabinet doors were not adjusted correctly so the interior hinges have put chips in the new enamel, the inside of our childrens' closet doors(bi-fold) doors were barely sprayed and the wood is showing through, the bottom edge of the bottom panels of every six panel interior door was missed with the sprayer, the baseboard is full of debris, AND THE LIST GOES ON. Oh yeah, we were told to pick out the kind of paint we wanted the house walls to be repainted with(necessary due to spraying)...no strings attached. We directed the painter to use Hirshfields Platinum Ceramic Eggshell(with microban technology). He screwed that up somehow and used this Top Scrub junk. At this point, we are on good terms with the painter and he is telling us he will return to fix anything we want fixed but I'm like...DUDE, we left you the entire stinking house for 2 weeks. Couldn't you get it right the first time? That is the story.

We have some walls with a gloss or semi-gloss and various issues to sort out before we repaint (probably with a satin). I posted pics of what we've got to work with here at the link below the post. On the first pic you'll see at the link, if the wall's like this in various spots, how do you remedy that? Do you just sand away the area - or won't that leave a slight dip in the region? Does it mean you really need to somehow paint-strip the entire wall with some chemical preparation? And in another room as shown in the other two pics, that's just the wall beneath peeking through and someone had filled wall dents with some sort of filler that didn't apparently work with whatever the wall is made of or the paint or something. What should we do in these areas to prep for paint? (And similar issue as above, regarding chipping.) This is a bathroom and I'm not certain what filler we should use for the wall (I think it's a wood wall) before painting. Thanks. Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of peeled paint and bad filler areas