Interior Color Scheme and Room Decisions

I have painted all of the exterior walls and pieces in two coats of Pale Sagebrush.  It's getting close to the time when I can FINALLY start to assemble this into something that looks like a house.  But first I have to paint the interior walls.

Paint vs. Wallpaper

Most people seem to choose wallpaper for the interior of Miniature Houses, but I don't want to do that for several reasons.

• First, I'm impatient.  If I wallpaper I have to wait until the whole house is assembled, then choose the wallpaper and then figure out how to install it, which seems like a tricky process. Bob has put up real wallpaper professionally, but I'm not sure his big giant hands would do so well in a miniature setting.  But if I paint, once the house is assembled the interior will be all finished and ready to decorate.

• Second, when I see Miniature Houses that are all wallpapered, if it's not done really well it can look crappy.  Paint is much more forgiving. And sometimes I feel like the wallpaper pattern overwhelms the room.

• Third, I'm trying to be thrifty.  Dollhouse wallpaper is around $4.00 a sheet, and I'd need three sheets per room, times six rooms.  The math is not pretty.  And I have all this leftover paint from when we painted our house that I can use for free.

So paint it is!

Laying Out the Rooms

Because I already have the paint, I didn't have to agonize so much over the color decisions.  But I did have to decide how the rooms would be used and then which room should be which color.  Here's what I decided:

Top Floor Left - Bathroom - Linen White

Top Floor Right - Bedroom - Pale Green

Middle Floor Left - Parlor - Pale Yellow

Middle Floor Right - Dining Room - Beige/Pink

Bottom Floor Left - Library - Terra Cotta

Bottom Floor Right - Kitchen - Linen White 

All the paint colors above are from Benjamin Moore and I no longer remember the actual names, although I was passionately interested at the time when we painted the house.

Before starting to paint, I had to assemble the room dividers together. Each room divider was made up of three pieces that had to be glued together.  Now the doorways from room to room can be seen.

Room dividers came in three separate pieces that had to be glued together

The next step was to measure and mark the walls.  I had to figure out where the floors will fall when the house is assembled, and also decide how big I wanted each room to be so I could mark the locations for the room dividers.

Walls are marked for painting

And now, paint!  It got a little confusing when I got close to the lines, but I'm optimistic that when the house is assembled the width of the floors and room dividers will cover any imperfections in the paint lines.

All the rooms are painted - looks messy but should be perfect
when the floors and walls are all in place.

Painting the room dividers was the hardest part, because obviously each side had to be painted a different color.

All the walls and room dividers are now painted

After all this paint dries, I think it's time to build!