Thought I would follow up the last blog entry with the kitchen story. No sense keeping you wondering - that would make it seem far more interesting then it really is. Although it is kinda funny - in my head at least.
Yes, we have been painting. Started Saturday the 24th and Done by Thursday the 5th )because I wisely scheduled a party to Show Off all the new painting - gotta have an incentive that could potentially embrass me to motivate myself apparently - and hey, it worked!!). Now - inbetween those two dates I think I made a lot of trips to Lowes. People joke that whenever doing a home project they often have to make more trips to the hardware store then planned. In this case it was true and apparently the worker people noticed because they started to great me. Thankfully it wasn't by name. They did great Babers by name though.
So here is what happened...........
I planned out all the colors for the rooms - Living Room; Safari Sun & La Fonda Antique Red - Dining Room; Secluded Garden (to match the hard to match kitchen floor - all the rooms are open to one another so they had to be tied together - yes, I watch a bit too much HGTV) - Entry & Stairwells; Terra Cotta Trail - Kitchen; Florentine Clay (because that awful teal/blue tile had to be challenged by a warm color that would also bleed into the other rooms and hall). So all the rooms had a nice warm tone to them and blended the teal/green floor well. We were proud of ourselves for our perfect picking.
And then we painted the Living Room - Yea!! Fabulous!!! Then the Dining Room - another 100% happy project done. We were very proud - okay, I was. BigGuy was taking it all in stride. Then we began the Hall Entry way - looked great, but we (I mean I - BigGuy didn't notice) began to realize that there was a lot of red/brown/yellow hues - and the house was beginning to look like an Earth Tone Poster Child. Yuck. Even Spidey walked through and said, "That is a lot of colors that kinda look like red."
Total Warning Flag when a 7 year old boy notices this. I decided to paint a part of a pillar in the kitchen to see if it would be overwhelming. As you can see in the above picture - it was.
Off to the hardware store. My plan was to pick out something greenish that wouldn't clash either the floor of the walls. It needed some yellow in it and some blue - not easy. Have I mentioned I really have grown to hate that kitchen floor? I hate that kitchen floor. BigGuy and I had been on line looking at colors and I knew what I wanted - then I made the mistake of asking this very nice looking woman who turned out to be a designer. She said play it safe. Not sure why - she hadn't even given me a business card so I could sue her if a green color went bad. She did point out a green color - it was in the "blue" hue. Then I looked for the guy who had helped me the first trip. No where around. This other woman was though - very pleasant - didn't seem to mind that I had taken over her counter and sprawled out a piece of our flooring - a piece of our cabinetry - all the swatches of paint I had already used - just about every other color swatch they had available and borrowed a musical book from the book rack to entertain Babers. So I asked for her help. She said the same thing the designer lady said. So I called BigGuy at work and meekly requested he come to the hardware store. He wouldn't - he said stick to my gut and my original plan. Good man - believes in me - so I did exactly what anyone else probably would. I caved and bought what the other two women said.
Took it home. Put it on the wall. It totally sucked!!! It was/is bathroom aquasurf crap green (real name was changed to protect the creator). Begged a friend to come over to confirm the crappiness. She did - looked at it and winced. Damn!! BigGuy came home and said I should have gone with my first instinct. Put color swatches on facebook to get feedback. No real help because no one can really see the dynamic of the crappy teal/green floor (which is actually nice looking - IF YOU AREN'T TRYING TO MATCH A PAINT TO IT). I should have sought out the original guy at the store - I am pretty sure he was gay - and no offense (although someone will probably take offense) I am generally not into stereotyping, but every gay couple I have known have always created emaculately decorated homes - the only guy I have known who didn't turned out to be bi.
Back to the store. This is where they start to recognize me. They tell me that I "can't return mixed colors". I assure them I am wanting to "fix" the color - not return it - because goodness knows everyone on the plante has need for bathroom aquasurf crap green paint. Same woman helping. It was way early - so no one else there to distract her. I suggest she find something else to do as this could take awhile. I spread out ALL my aforementioned items. She fingers around them. She seems way excited about this process. Can't figure out what her deal is. Kinda wished she would go away as I was already having a slight Nervous Breakdown over this ONE SIMPLE COLOR!!! And finally she does - I think it was the 5 request for her to leave that tipped her off. Back and forth I go from the swatch wall to my stuff. Back and forth. Olive hue? Blue hue? Give up, go safe like the designer lady said and do a deep beige and the Florentine Clay combo? Wait - is the name of that deep beige really Warm Butt? Ack! Oh, oh, those are little tiny "f's" - oh, Warm Buff. That makes more sense. Kinda. What is a Warm Buff? I know what a Warm Butt is - see - this is just an example of what was goin' on in my head and why I was having a NERVOUS COLOR BREAK DOWN!!
Finally I picked Blue Grass Mood. Called my new friend over. She was crazy excited when it turned out that they could do an exact Color Fix (the official term for what we were doing) on the original paint. Just to be safe I also had a sample can of Warm Butt mixed. Side note - she didn't seem to get as big a giggle over Warm Butt as I did - but she wasn't having a break down either. She hand mixed the beige and while the big can was mixing I wandered over to the book rack where Babers musical book is kept (no one apparently ever buys those books - my guess is there are there for lame-o dads who forget it is Christmas and find themselves in the hardware store for something). At the book rack I found a book on color - and several hundred color mixtures in rooms. Some of them were absolutely hideous - making me feel better about any blunder I might be about to make with my colors. What's the worse case - I have to repaint right? No biggie.
Then, as we are sitting there flipping through the book (my friend was looking while we waited) I made the statement, "Shouldn't you be trained in paint matching to work in this department?" Her response was, "No, I have a degree in Horticulture." My face scrunched up in confusement (my word creation - back off) and said, "Then, shouldn't you be working in lawn and garden?" She smiled and said, "Yep. I could help people there." Sigh.
As I was leaving she grabbed my arm and thanked me. She said, "I spend almost every day mixing different colors of beige. It has been fun mixing your colors." I thanked her. Then she said, "People should Live in their House and paint color instead of beige."
I walked away happy that we are painting our house in color and getting rid of the beige. She hit my feeling exactly. Paint your house the color that matches who you are. This of course means that we are very loud, bold, bright people - but it also means we aren't beige.
What color is the kitchen? Well...........that has yet to be solved as of my writing - but we are at least to this point of deciding ~
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