In a past home, we had a walkway on the 2nd story that was open to the family room. We HATED it. Our son could hear the phone ring on the first floor and he was much farther down the hall. We walled up that 2nd story walkway. I would DEFINITELY do doors. Maybe French doors if you don't want pocket doors. Also, we did some areas of our new house with extra insulation and sound board. I would do this too. I have another friend who had a new house that she did not build and the thing she hated was all the sound between floors. I would do anything possible to keep that sound from mingling with the floor below. If your sons are anything like mine, they like to stay up later than we do. You will want a door there! Think about Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Do you have those games??? We are doing a video game room in our new house in the basement and we put doors on it. Soundproof that room!!!! :)

Happy to help! make someone happy today! The dim of the washer/dryer that we use are shown on the drawing. I actually had the shower as you want and then I moved it because I thought you'd have more room when you entered the laundry since the shower was supposed to be 3'. If you want to have a bigger mud room bench you can use a pocket door. I draw the wall for the pocket with 2x6 studs for a sturdier wall. Are you using a shower base (you have a lot of sizes to chose from) and then tile the surround or use nudo board or some cultured marble or acrylic to protect walls? If your pets are small you could use a Mop Sink. Most of them are 24"x24" and they come with a hose, you can also plug them to fill it up, they are deep enough and I think you can get and standard protection for the walls. Good luck!

Cancel the painter appointment. It's ridiculous to expect to be happy with a choice you rushed into when you've spent a fair amount of time struggling with it. Not to mention the expense of having someone else do it with a color you aren't sure about. Stop buying gallons of paint. Sherwin Williams has quart samples for $5 and there is a coupon for buy 1, get 1 free. I'm sure you can have samples made up at several paint stores, as well. Ok, I'm assuming you are staying with the imperial yellow? I like it, it's bold and I had that color in the living room of my last home. My dining room was paper-bag brown with a metallic gold ceiling I did in a kind of starburst. A little moody, but that's what I like for a dining area. I used red accents to spice it up. Our den was a brick red that leaned toward a deep coral and it flowed off the yellow very well. Like parma said, you want to have similar saturation of color in order for them to play well together. My cousin has an orange entry, purple front room, yellow living area and the back wall is a turquoise. It is fairly open concept and everything flows wonderfully because she used colors with similar intensity.

Thanks so much for the feedback and help everyone. I am going to try 50% white dove, 50% atrium white and I'll report back on the color. Hopefully it will be helpful to others. This is for the upstairs bedroom ceilings. I may get more adventurous with the ceilings downstairs. I understand the trend, Pattycakes. I don't want to be out of date; I know white ceilings are somewhat boring and unimaginative, but I think they will never go completely out of style, sort of like white kitchen cabinets. There are some rooms that just need the light. I do appreciate knowing that the trend is towards color on the ceilings and will definitely consider that in the other parts of the house.