I have been able to get wonderful tradesmen using Home Advisors. Also, if there is a color you like, you can have the paint store lighten or darken it, by requesting, say Revere Pewter at 25% or at 125%.
Oregon, I have a friend who’s a high end decorator and could ask her. But I’m down to what Laurel Bern calls the “difference between 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock” – i.e., colors so close only a fussbudget would notice. Even she says, after lots of words and pictures, “Just pick one.” (If anyone doesn’t know the reference, she came up on another thread and many of us like her blogs.)
I know myself- I need a certain bit more churning, then will pick one and go for it. And if I hate it, there’s still the chance to tweak the second coat, lol.
@rosered55, if you don’t have friends who can recommend the professionals that Coralbrook suggests, you can also look on yelp or nextdoor so you can see reviews. Having said that, I used a painter from nextdoor and had to pay someone else close to the same amount to fix the terrible job the first guy did…
We’ve been in our condo for a year next week. The space is the perfect size, it’s in excellent repair and it came nicely furnished. Certain parts of it are original, as in, original to its 1980s era build date. Think mirrored walls and a color scheme best described as “80s desert”, or watermelon blush pink and cotton candy blue.
We’ve done small fixes and updates - new stove and dishwasher, new washer & dryer, new toilet courtesy of our home warranty. The carpet will have to go, and we’d like to enlarge our patio, but those are for later when there’s more $$.
This month I’ll be painting, possibly including the kitchen cabinets. The kitchen has nice granite that was installed without replacing the original cabinets. They’re maple veneer, but a bit worn in places. The granite is called Lady’s Dream, and it’s gorgeous, though not what I might have picked on my own. It’s cream, copper and a sort of coral / salmon color. So for the cabinets, I either need to go darker and a bit redder, such as a mocha or cinnamon glaze (which would push things in a Craftsman or Spanish Colonial direction), or I need to go lighter, such as an antique white. I’m still deciding. 
@lookingforward --I know exactly what you mean! I cannot tell you how many whites I bought in my search for a color for the foyer and upstairs hallways. I then started seeing houses using the palest of blues for the hallways, and decided to go that route, as I do not really like tans or grays, and those are commonly used. Yet I needed something other than white, as the molding and trim is all white (albeit, not just white-white). Ended up with Marilyn’s Dress for the walls, which looks blue in some light, gray in others, and then pure bleached out white when the sun hits it. It reads much more blue and less gray than the BM sample on my monitor. Trim is Chantilly Lace.
Good luck with the churning!
Lowe’s SW line of paints is awesome and much cheaper than comparable paints at SW. I am painting the ugly stained trim in our bedroom Oxford White. It is gorgeous.
Since may of us like BM, can anyone share which tier for the walls: Aura, Regal or Natura?
I was planning to repaint the first fl trim and doors same White Dove. But though it looks fab with the yellow DR walls, (C2 Polenta, love it, looks like a color in Provence,) it shows the grey tones with my hunt for the Holy Grail cream. And I’d really like the foyer/hall trim to be a tad lighter than the walls.
My relative ripped out the carpet and installed new wooden laminate flooring that was on sale at Costco plus painted that bedroom including the ceiling in one weekend. They also put bedding encasings on bedding. It really improved their kid’s allergies. The rest of the house still has carpeting except for one bedroom upstairs for their other asthmatic child. That room is also a wooden floor.
@lookingforward If you have a color you really like, but just need it a shade lighter or dark, you can have BM tweak it a bit by adding some white or black. I did this years ago when a color was just a shade too dark, but otherwise I loved the color. Depending on the colors in the paint, the store can adjust the percent of one color within the paint to make it an better!
That said, if you are anal like me, it still took a couple of tries to get it just right 
I have added some light to the house by having my older cheapo steel doors get refreshed with full-length glass inserts with integral blinds. Home Depot has a vendor that comes out to the house, takes the door off the hinges, cuts out the inside and installs the double-glassed unit in the space of about an hour for less than $400 a door. I got Low-E for the back door that gets so much sun, and it feels cool to the touch inside. At night for privacy, close the blinds. During the day, set them at the angle you want for light and privacy. They are custom making a slightly larger insert for the front door and I look forward to having that installed. We already put in new lockset, and will paint the rest of the door inside and out with a cheerful color.
We purchased my DH’s old farmhouse home that’s 90 years old from his mom. My H & I decided to update it since it’s not been updated in 40 years. Imagine 40+ yr old carpet. Yuck! Only thing updated is a bathroom and kitchen. Discovered house still had some old knob and tube wiring which means taking down walls to update which is okay since walls had old 40+ wallpaper over plaster walls. In some cases the only thing holding up the wall is the wallpaper. Some positives are when we pulled up carpet throughout the house, we discovered oak floors through the house. We are also adding more outlet, wiring for home theater, etc…We found a wonderful contractor using HomeAdvisor.
Need some advice on where to find window coverings for all over the house. The window are not too deep so I can’t have 2’ wooden blinds which I like. MIL had white vinyl roller shades that are going away. (Memories of my children pulling on them so much that they quit rolling up.) Walls are not not yet since they’re working on electrical so I have time to look.
We just completed an outdoor renovation. When we bought our house twenty years ago the deck had been built over the bulkhead door (there was a door cut into the deck, but over the years the wood had swollen and it no longer opened - I never felt comfortable having kids over in our basement without a second means of egress). We had the original stairs “capped off” and a hole cut into the foundation on the side of the house for a new set of stairs.
The pool equipment was where the new bulkhead is located, so we had to move the equipment out five feet (so bought a new filter and heater). We built a new Trex deck (Island Mist) with a cocktail rail (see avatar).
The pool needed a new lining, so we decided to move the stairs from the outside of the pool to inside the pool to make it look more modern (on the opposite side), which necessitated some new concrete to fill in where the old stairs were. We had the whole pool deck painted so the new concrete would blend in.
We also had a railroad tie retaining wall replaced with technoblock and a patio with pavers put in around a corner of the pool, new vinyl fencing and had the lawn hydroseeded (we also removed four oak trees from the front and back yards). We started this project in the fall and just had our first party yesterday. It was a long process but we absolutely love how it all turned out.
@lookingforward, I always try to use BM Regal Select for interior walls. It gives a flawless look.
Thanks, cbreeze, that’s what I had in mind.
TQ and Snowball, I’ve done the color tweaking, notably in the kitchen and master, was happy but now have no idea what the mix was. Grrr.
If you take a painchip of the color, most places have a computer that can ID and re-create the same color, I’ve heard.
I’ve used and like BM Regal Select, but I prefer Aura. For baths, Aura bath & spa (matte).
Aura Grand Entrance is what I used for the front door. It went on smoothly with just a touch of primer needed to cover the icky stain.
I’ll do the front door after they paint the house front. BM Terracotta. Over the years, it faded (east side- and that gets many hours of sun.) Maybe Aura GE will hold the color better.
Meantime, I laugh cuz I always seem to get involved with these projects during heat waves.
For @notrichenough - saw this material installed at the city park and thought about your “new” dock! It looked pretty durable and non-slippery. I am considering this for the walkway to the deck at our new place.
http://thruflow.com/
Next home improvement project: a bathouse for the bats ousted from the deck. Like we don’t have enough on our hands… Sigh. But we feel guilty that the poor critters had to depart and like their mosquito killing powers!