Bring on the color

The first time we looked at our house we were sold. I’m talking the off whispering in a corner, rose-colored-glasses-wearing, terrible poker faces kind of sold. Hardwood floors! 3 bedrooms! A garage! A finished basement! A fenced-in yard! Appliances included! Everything was perfect. I even said several times, “We don’t even need to paint! I love this color!”

Then reality set in. We really did get a fantastic house, but of course it wasn’t perfect, and the first thing that had to go was that paint. That color I loved so much when we looked at the house was beige. The same exact shade of beige in almost every single room in the house, like the previous owners had gotten one heck of a deal on 27 cans of paint that no one ever picked up from the mixing counter at Home Depot. I already warned you about the rose-colored glasses, didn’t I?

The minute we moved in we got right down to painting the living and dining rooms. We only had a few days before our furniture would be delivered and we needed to take advantage of the space while we could. We put the Bug in her baby jail with a bunch of toys and set to work, all the while dancing and singing to her in an attempt to keep her entertained. Yeah. About that… Have you ever spent several hours completing a task while simultaneously trying to keep a fenced-in one-year-old alive and happy? And how did that go for you? Yeah, same here. Bug channeled her Hulk strength and dragged her jail all around the living and dining rooms trying to get to Mommy and Daddy, crying all the way. To get a little perspective, this is the type of “jail” I’m referring to. It’s not light weight, at least not for a toddler.

Eventually we had newly whitened ceilings, a bright white window frame (formerly “wood”), and two grand wall colors: ‘Seal Grey’ and ‘Spanish Olive’ (colors are from Glidden chips, but we used Behr paint) to complement our soon to be delivered living room set. As is typical, hubby was skeptical of my vision, but he loved it as much as I did when it all came together. I am not afraid of color!

Like my $30 Craigslist coffee table? I’ve got a whole other post cooked up about that, just you wait!

So the grey continued into the dining room since we have one long wall that is shared by the two rooms. The original plan was to paint the other two walls in the dining room a shade of yellow called ‘Butter’ because I desperately wanted a grey and yellow scheme in the dining room and had already bought yellow plates to display on the wall. Hubby was highly skeptical. The first coat went up and I thought to myself “it’s just the first coat, it will look great with one more coat.” Then the second coat went up. Ok, maybe I am afraid of color. Hubby and I spent several days afraid to tell the other that we hated it. We then blamed the necessity of ‘Butter’s’ death on my desire to paint the kitchen bright blue. Too many colors in one space and all that. Yep, that’s it. Luckily we had more grey paint!

I still wanted my punch of yellow though, so we looked to vinyl to solve that problem. Turned out pretty well if I say so myself. What do you think?

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