The Birth of The Bold Abode

I love being at home.  I am a total, complete, 100% home-body. If my family didn’t absolutely need to eat, I wouldn’t even go out to the grocery store.    So as I spend my days within these walls, cleaning (or not), cooking (or reheating), reading (when I should be folding clothes) and avoiding embedding tiny (and very sharp) lego pieces into my bare feet, (sorry fly-lady…the shoe thing never took), I dream of being surrounded by warmth and beauty and vibrant color.

It has been three years of stopping and starting, insecurity and uncertainty.  We painted the boys rooms before we even moved in.  Then came the dining room.  Pumpkin, thanks to the implorations of a big-eyed four year old.  I didn’t love it at first; there is orange everywhere~ the walls, the floor, the stain on the furniture.  I’m keeping my eyes open for a great rug to break up the floor to ceiling orange-fest, but it has most definitely grown on me.

Not too long after, I found  Pear Green from Benjamin Moore for the Entry.  Wow!  Pear Green turned out to be more like, in-yo-face-fluorescent green.  They should give out a pair of free sunglasses with each gallon.  Oh, well.  The walls, and then shortly after,  the piano lit up the house.

Whew!  I was t-i-r-e-d.  I needed and took a break~a year at least.  Then the white walls started whispering again.  I desperately wanted to paint the main floor of the house. But it is so almost open, that I couldn’t see not painting it all the same color, and I didn’t want to make a colossal mistake. I couldn’t take the “almost while” of the walls and, everyday, they called to me, beseeched me to dress them anew. My poor husband.  He kept telling me to just pick a color.  He’d pull paint chip after paint chip and say, “this looks good”.  It was when he pulled Goldfinch from Sherwin Williams that I knew I HAD to make a decision.  If you’re not sure what Goldfinch looks like, think Pear Green but Yellow and turn up the volume to whiplash…

But, I did learn a valuable lesson from the Pear Green episode.  Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the foyer.  Won’t paint over it, ever.  Well, at least for now.  But, I realized how beneficial samples can be.  So I bought a truck load of them, and I lived with them.  I watched them play in the light of the morning and change clothes in the afternoon sun.  Paint colors contain certain subtleties in their hues that change in the light as if they are thoughts or moods or expressions.  And I needed that certain undefinable quality that seemed to be alluding me.  And then, as if I were waking from a long winter of hibernation, I found it, and when I found it, I knew it.

So this is it~~  Moody Blue.  Sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes grey.  Definitely moody.  Nope, no similarity to the painter.  No way.  None at all…

Looks grey, I know.  But it’s not…not really…

I am so still not done.  I don’t suppose the right brain ever rests.  So be it.

Yet, I am bathing in the delight of hard work and self-expression as I seek to transform boring walls and empty spaces.  Having rented for twelve years, I was never able to paint~never able to do anything permanent to our space.  Perhaps now, I am stepping out over the decorating edge and peering down into the abyss of DIY over-do, but my over-indulgent husband keeps encouraging me and reminding me that this is OUR home.  I’m having to stifle that annoying voice that keeps saying “be careful…think about resale!”