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WALLS & CEILING - Finishing off the walls and ceilings can really add some drama to your project and transform it into a masterpiece. Painting is a quick and affordable way to completely transform a room. All within a few hours too.

The trend in picking colors has always been to play it safe, which of course presents one color palette. Earthtones. They're safe and they're also not going do much for you bathroom. Nothing really pops off of an earthtone color wall.

Fortunately people are becoming more daring in their color choices. Sometimes they require a little encouragement though to get them past that point of being nervous. The color that you choose will set the whole tone of the room. Growing up we probably all heard from our parents that if you paint the room a light color, it will look bigger. Off white was a big seller back then. So was burnt orange shag. Thank god we don't really use either anymore.

If you're up for a nice little challenge, why not try a faux finish to your walls. Maybe a ragging technique. It's really pretty easy to do when it comes down to it. A bit of advice though. When you start ragging, it's going to look terrible and you'll wonder what you've gotten yourself into. You're going to be ready to abandon the idea and paint over it. Just keep going and it'll start to come together.

A suitable finish for a powder room is a matte or eggshell finish as it holds up well to the light use it sees. Bathrooms with children may do better with a Satin finish, as it's more cleanable. You'll hear people say you have to use semi-gloss in a bathroom. Bathrooms are painted in finishes from matte through semi-gloss and they've all held up great through the years. The shinier the finish, the more it will show imperfections in the walls and ceilings. Once you start getting into a satin or shinier finish, you're going to start noticing a lot of imperfections. Paint finishes range in the following order: (less to more shiny) matte or flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss, and then gloss.

Don't neglect the top of the bathroom. Your ceiling can play a role in the overall appearance of the room. If you want to make your ceiling look higher, use a matte or flat ceiling paint. Since no light bounces off of a flat finish, you tend to look through the color instead of at it. It also hides imperfections. I've seen ceilings painted with a sheen finish and you can spot nearly every location that a nail was placed when the sheetrock was installed.

Some crown moulding around the perimeter of the ceiling can create a real "wow" effect. Warning though. Crown is the most difficult of all moulding to install. There are excellent resources for cutting crown moulding on the Internet. The only way to get good at crown moulding is to do enough of it, all the time.

Out of all the experiments you can do with a room, painting is the least expensive and will probably cause the least amount of damage. If you don't like it, you repaint it. You're out 20 bucks. But by being daring and taking that chance, you just might amaze yourself and your guests. Pick a color, any color…except off white.

Cover the floor and fixtures and tape off anything you do not want to get paint on. Aside from the accidental spill, you will get tiny dots of paint on everything from the roller spray. You might not notice it as you're rolling, but it's happening. The last thing you want is your wife being able to say, "I told you so".

Always do two coats. Don't try to do one heavy coat. This includes the ceiling also. Two coats. I'll say it one more time. Two nice, even coats.

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