Week May 3rd: pt. 2

Tuesday, May 4

Here is how paint colors are chosen in our house—

Me: You know, I think we really kind of need a change after 30 years.  And I think I’d like black walls this time.  Any shade; doesn’t matter to me.  Just so it’s good and saturated—and I end up liking it.

Guy: The walls should be white.  Not white white, not eggshell exactly, but something creamy and neutral.  Without any red or orange or pink or blue or green tint to it.  One of these two: cottage white or maybe old lace.  But whatever you decide.

Compromise: put off picking anything.

You have always wanted to know what Santa does for a day job, right?

This was not the actual discussion.  It’s not like I actually wanted black walls.  Exactly.  But I tried the Armstrong Paint “Paint a room” utility and realized that I definitely like a room’s walls to be on the saturated side.  Light neutrals look cold to me.  But color feels cozy.

The Room of the Windows, framed up

So G brought home some paint chips and brochures from Home Depot, and we worried over them, trying to extrapolate from a .45″ X .7″  rectangle of color what an entire room full of walls would look like.  A few weeks later, I went back to Home Depot (inspired by my friend Heidi) and stood in front of the samples for an hour, trying to pull together different color combinations in sets.  I brought home about 32 samples and another several brochures.  I bought a magazine about color and walls.  Then another one.

Then I went to Texas to hang with my sis and dad, and when Kev and I hit Lowe’s one day, I took home another 60 or so samples and 12 more brochures, all of which I took home in my carry-on bag.

The same room with dry wall

We deposited all the colors on the dining room table.  I grouped them.  We shuffled them like cards.  We pulled out the ones we liked and discarded the ones that wouldn’t work.

We got the colors down to three: one really nice neutral for the entire Assembly Hall downstairs, wall and ceiling – to be used also on the ceiling upstairs.  Then my green, which was not as dark as I’d have liked.  And his green, which was way darker than he’d have liked.

Somehow, I was thinking maybe I could magically come up with a color right smack between those two grappling greens.

The assembly hall, dry walled

Tuesday, the painters came.  They came early.  Greg is a big, hearty man with a kind way and knows his business.  And the exciting thing about painters is, when they open up those cans and get to work, everything really changes.  Greg came with gallons of primer.  He intended to send out for the paint as soon as I gave him the colors.

With the painter standing there in front of me and G stuck in the studio working, it was kind of time to decide between our two greens.  I waffled, then decided to make one more run to the home center.  But Greg offered me his Kwal paint book—which was huge.  When I say huge I mean three inches thick and full of tiny color samples.  So I jumped on it, sure I could find a bridge green.  And I did.  I found one.  And we were happy.  Very happy.  Greg and I, I mean.

Isn’t this just fascinating?  Yeah, it was a little slow for us, too

I spent hours working on the quilt images while they were masking and blowing on the primer in the boonies of the house.  Hours later, I went upstairs to see my wonderful, carefully chosen, relationship-sustaining green in person on the walls.  It was a very exciting moment, heading up those steps to see the transformation of the Room of Windows.

I stopped half way down the hall and stared.

The color was awful.  I HATED it.  Non committal.  Too mamby-pamby.  Too blue.  Too weak.  Arhhhhhhh!!!

So I crept away down to my desk (read “desk” as: cave dug in the side of a mountain of stacked furniture).  It had been a long three months full of stops and starts and rocks in the road.  Now this: huge numbers of square feet of wall, totally UGLY.   I sat there and shed tears all over my keyboard. Which was not a good thing, because I was already having problems with Photoshop, and I still had 1000 quilt shots to crop and sharpen and otherwise edit, and the last thing I needed was to short out said keyboard.

Guy found me there.

“What is it?” he asked.

And all I could do was weep and point toward the upstairs.

The assembly hall, interesting end.  Drywall done and painted (successfully).

So he went up to check it out.  And brought me back a message from the painters: paint always dries darker.  That’s what you have to know before you react.  (“Now, now.  It’s going to be just fine.”)

But when the color is wrong,  paint just dries darker wrong.

Greg and team had done a great job.  Really perfect.  No drips.  The seam between the neutral ceiling and the green wall done by hand.  All the color even and lovely.  We thanked them warmly.  But after they left, we looked at each other and both of us said, “We hate it.”  Which was a comfort.  At least we can both hate the same thing in harmony once in a while.

But that’s what you get when you try to please everybody.

We went out and sat on the curb with our feet in the gutter.  (metaphorically)

“We’ll repaint it tomorrow,” he said.  But not like he wanted to.  Not like either one of us wanted to.

A phooey moment.