Going white and some other stuff too

My dream was to live in this house from the movie,  It's Complicated.  Well, I knew that was never going to happen,after all, it was for sale for a whopping $12 million in Santa Barbara.  And, anyways, I liked the movie version so much better.  It was quaint and charming and perfectly imperfect.  It was perfection to me:)

So, 6 months ago, we fell upon our fixer upper that we would make our home.  We were obviously not turning this one into a Spanish farm house. After all, it was a brick and wood exterior. And, that is quite ok, because a Cape Cod is my other fav design type.  After all, I am a VA girl at heart.

 

Some inspiration for the look we were going after...

 

 

Either way, Spanish farmhouse or Cape Cod ranch....we would make the interior a modern farmhouse.

As we were going along, I was really struggling with what color to paint the walls.  I have been obsessed with white walls in contrast with rustic woods.  Does it really get any more perfect than this...

But, for some reason I was a little nervous to go all white, not 100% convinced.  So, we decided on loggia by Sherwin Williams.  It is a super nice neutral and is more of a greige color. Loggia mid-progress below. In addition, my husband was preaching in my ear (that white is so 1990's......little does he know..ha ha:)

I am happy with it.  There are still some days where I wonder if we should have gone all white. We went all white in our guest room below and I just love it (please see below and excuse the fact that it is still not "decorated" and the messy back yard).

So, we moved forward with the greige on the wall and the next question was what to do with the wood ceiling.  Mind you, this was not pretty or authentic beams.  They were you average wood from a 60's ranch.  I knew what I wanted-white.

 But then my hubbie wanted some input on some things :) (This my friends can be dangerous). He wanted to stain it. In his defense, if we had the right artistic painter and stained it a cool gray oak color and roughed it up a bit... then that would have worked out. But we didn't. Long story short we went with the cheaper bid (and incompetent painter-as I mentioned in a previous post) and that got us into some serious trouble. And, the stain did not turn out so well. But, moving on, we brought our beloved more expensive painter back in to fix the mistakes and we agreed this darkness had to be painted white.

So, a before.  This is what we started with in the very beginning.

 This is where we ended up a couple of months ago...way too dark.

And, this is where we are now...a happy place:)It is so much lighter and brighter and definitely the look I wanted in the first place.  Go with your gut, my friends. It has won almost every time!!