Do you want to cover the knots in the wood or do you want them to show through the paint?

BM now sells it's original oil-based alykd (in a petroleum oil base), a water-clean-up alkyd (in a mineral oil base), and latex paint. They tell me that the water-clean-up alkyd is almost as good as the oil-based alkyd but I'm skeptical, so I went with the original oil base when I painted the inside of my exterior doors recently. The original oil base is supposedly going to be phased out (it already has been modified so much to eliminate VOCs that it isn't nearly as strong as the oil paints were "back in the day"). The water-based alkyds will remain available. This info is all per the owner of my local BM store and current as of 2 weeks ago when I bought my paint. As far as painting latex over oil goes, you CAN do it, but you need to prep well and use a bonding primer. I've been doing it (my whole house was oil based on the trim) for a couple years now by washing the oil paint on the trim to remove the dirt/grime, painting one coat of a bonding primer like Zinsser 123, and then painting 2 coats of latex topcoat. It's been fine. If you put latex directly on top of oil with no primer, it won't stick. The PO's did that in a couple of the bedrooms here, and I was able to literally PULL most of their paint off with my hands (I had to use a scraper in a couple spots, but for the most part, it came off in big sheets!) to get back down to the oil paint, which I then primed and recoated with latex. Yeah, that wasn't fun. So if you're gonna put latex over oil (or even the waterbased alkyds over oil), I'd definitely spend the time doing a coat of bonding primer -- better safe than sorry.

ptamom, The kitchen has beadboard from floor to ceiling. The adjoining "dining room" has beadboard wainscoting with textured wall above it. If I paint the wainstcoting white to match the cabinets, and the kitchen beadboard something other than white (same color as textured wall?), will that look odd?? I'm avoiding tearing it all out, and in the process having to rip out the crown molding and baseboard, but I so desparately do not want to find 2 coordinating colors for the wainscoting and wall (ie: 2 shades of tan). I've looked at colors until I want to pull my hair out!! My counter is Key West gold which has a lot of "salmon" to it, and I'm avoiding any paint with a pink hue. I cannot figure out how to upload pics! Thank you!

I have a bathroom at my lakehouse that is even smaller and it has beadboard from floor to and including ceiling. It's the original and 125 years old. We have the original tub and sink and it works so well. The fact that it is all the same makes it appear bigger. If you plan to put the beadboard on part of the wall I would say the lower half is the way to go, not halfway as it will cut the room to the viewers eye but about a foot higher. I think I would just paint above that since its a small bathroom and steam may impact the wallpaper.