Six to One

Inspirational song: Lavender (Marillion)

I have an aversion to white walls. I find them emotionally void, lifeless, soulless. I would lose what's left of my mind if I had to spend more than a few weeks living in a white, undecorated room. One of the first things I do when I move is plan where my paintings will hang, and what color of walls will set off their colors best. I've been known to agonize over getting the shades exactly right to match some aspect of a painting, or to create a very specific mood with my palette. I planned for weeks on the beach colors for the Park, while I waited for closing day to arrive. I am taking a very different approach in this house. I tried to put up paint samples, and venture into new territory with the pale lavenders I thought would complement the turquoise and copper in the kitchen. I couldn't bring myself to love any of them, so when a gallon of mis-tinted paint fell into my possession, my hare-brained scheme was born. I was going to blend it with varying degrees of white, and it was going to be very seat-of-my-pants as I went along. So far my "don't overthink it" methodology is leading me down the right paths. I spent less than three minutes total choosing the bedroom color, and despite telling the paint counter lady, "Meh. If I don't like it I will repaint it in six months," we both seem to like it. I knew exactly what color I would paint the bathroom, and I bought that paint first. I just haven't prioritized that project, what with everything else going on. And today, when Mr S-P texted me from Lowes to say he forgot the paint chip for the other bedroom/dressing room, I took that opportunity to change the hustle, and I sent him a photo of two different colors, and told him to surprise me. That room will end up very feminine and I think I will enjoy that for my old fashioned dressing room.

For the piano bar and dining room, I ended up with three shades of gray, all different than what I anticipated when I started. The door is significantly lighter than I thought we would have, but it sort of works for me. The man is still disappointed that it wasn't the charcoal gray he hoped for. (But free paint is free paint, so we are keeping it.) For an accent wall, I diluted the pewter gray by fifty percent with a plain, untinted ultra white base. While I know neither the man nor I is colorblind, he sees battleship gray while I see Wedgewood blue. I'm letting it cure overnight and I will re-evaluate come morning light. Maybe then we will decide whether we tile the back of the niche on that wall, or use mirrors and window grid lines. For the rest of the walls, I started with a three to one dilution, sampling on the wall each stage until I got it right. It took a six to one ratio of white and gray to make a color that was light enough to stand out against the accent wall and blue enough to complement it. It seemed so horribly dark as I cut it in next to all the white, but once the fields were filled in, it lightened up to a color I like. Finally, the front door seems dark in comparison. The blue simultaneously cools off the room and warms it up. The stained woods of my furniture and the vivid green leaves of house plants look a thousand times brighter next to it. I can't wait to hang the painting that was the driving factor in the decision to go more gray than purple. I set it out for a picture before I painted the walls, but I don't yet know how it will look against them. I'm way too tired and sore from painting all day long to test it now. That reveal will wait until everything is dry. Until then, I'm going to enjoy the view I have of one finished corner of the room, and I'm letting myself feel the happy that this place is finally starting to look like a home that a sane person lives in. No more white walls!