When I decided to paint our living room, dining area, upstairs hallway, and two stairwells while my husband was on a fishing trip and I was home with four kids, I knew it would be a big job. In our old house, painting an area meant standard 8 ft. ceilings. Here, it means vaulted ones that peak at 10 feet. That gradual climb of two feet may not seem like much, but it adds quite a bit of square footage!

There were three things that helped to maintain my sanity. I highly recommend them.

• My old friend: the EZ Twist Paint Stick. Total lifesaver with vaulted ceilings.

• My new friend: the Shur-Line Pro Edger. Seriously, where have you been all my painting life? The thing is a dream. I'm not exaggerating when I say it reduced my cutting-in time by more than half.

• The fact that the paint that I used--Behr Premium Plus Ultra---only required one coat! That was a definite first for me. Now, I'm sure it was because I was painting over a color that wasn't a huge contrast, but still. It saved me a couple of hours at least. Behr gets slammed by some people (Mostly contractors from what I've seen--DIYers seem to love it. Hmm..), but I used this formula for my last three painting projects and was thrilled with the coverage.

As far as color, the shade I painted over was a neutral, but it had kind of a pink undertone. And since I lean toward warm colors in my decorating, it just never looked right. Definitely not bad enough to motivate me to change it right away (especially since it was freshly painted before we moved in), but enough to ponder and research and choose a color well before I decided to go for it almost two years later.

The walls went from Valspar Artist's Canvas to Benjamin Moore Shaker Beige (color matched at Home Depot).

Bye-bye pink undertone, hello true neutral. It's not always easy to accurately capture the color with photos, but you can at least see how it warmed up considerably.
I can't say that I love to paint, but I do so love covering up nicks and black marks and nail holes with a fresh paint job. Especially a single coat paint job. :)

P.S. I realize that not everyone prefers warm colors! If any of my local readers is in need of a "cool" neutral, I have a 5-gallon bucket of the Artist's Canvas (on the left) that's at least 2/3 full. It's yours for the asking.