Update Your Trim & Doors With Paint!
Our Contractor grade home came with light oak colored trim, cabinets & doors. Since I lean toward warm colors in my decorating, I've been replacing baseboards & trim around the doors with wood and for the areas I've not yet done, I have been painting with one of my favorite Behr brand colors - Chocolate Cupcake.
Now, you might think, 'Oh, a nice chocolate brown'. However, it's actually a deep olive green. Odd, right?Here is the paint swatch for the colors I've been using on the walls, cabinets, trim in the house.
Here is the original color of the trim, doors, cabinets. When I decided to use real wood for the trim, I started with the downstairs and have been slowly replacing the baseboards and trim as I update each room. I have also replaced all the interior oak-colored doors in the house with ones I found at Habitat (I donated my doors to them at the same time). You can find the post on how I did that on my blog. For the trim that I've not yet replaced, I decided to freshen it up with a little paint. Painting the trim is considerably less expensive, faster and requires fewer supplies and tools. While I had the paint out, I also decided to paint the window sills upstairs, the pantry door & the closet doors in the Master Bedroom.
To be honest, I did very little prep before painting the trim, cabinets & doors. When I painted the kitchen cabinets & bathroom vanities, I did a very light, quick sanding with a sanding block. For the closet doors, I did a quick wipe with a slightly damp cloth to remove any dust. But for the baseboards & trim around the doorways, I just dusted them with a dustrag. To apply paint to the trim, I used my favorite 1" angled paintbrush. For the doors, I used a painting pad.
I wasn't certain how well the paint would last on the window sills but have been pleasantly surprised!
Painting the light oak in the master bedroom made such a difference in the feel of the room. It is now more warm and cozy feeling. Even though the wall color is not from the swatch, the Chocolate Cupcake coordinates well.
This is one of the doors I found at Habitat. It was only $45 (the rest of the doors were $10/ea).Painting the trim around this wood door made such a difference!
Here are the hallway doors after I replaced the original ones. There are 5 doors in this hallway!
When I bought the pantry door at Habitat, it was white like the ones in the hallway but it did not blend well with the kitchen so, I painted it with the Chocolate Cupcake. Now that I was painting the trim with that color, I decided to use another color from the swatch - Mississippi Mud - for the door. Since I was also going to paint the trim around the entry to the pantry, I removed the door to make the process easier. I used the kitchen table as a work table to repaint the door.
While the door was drying, I applied two coats of paint to the trim around the pantry opening.
After hanging the door, I decided to apply a stencil that I found online. Super cute!
Completed pantry door & trim
At this time, the only room that has not had the trim altered is the home office which is upstairs. As you can see, the walls in that room are a deep red with gold & light green. I feel like adding the Chocolate Cupcake for the trim and closet may darken the room too much. I plan to replace the trim and baseboards with wood eventually so at this time, the light oak remains.If you'd like to see the other projects I've worked on, check out these on my blog:
Let's Create a Mudroom!
Let's Install Board & Batten!
Let's Paint the Vanities!
Let's Organize the Craft Room!
Let's Add Finishing Touches!
Let's Replace all the Interior Doors!
Let's Paint the Kitchen Cabinets!
How I updated my staircase
The cost estimate is if you need to buy all the materials. I had them so the painting part was free. The stencil was $8
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