Monday, August 23, 2010

Putting it back together...

This weekend marked the end of this phase of the Great Painting & Flooring Adventure of 2010. It nigh about killed us all by the end. OK, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I can honestly say the thought of wielding a brush or roller again anytime in the near future makes me want to weep, and I'm pretty sure Kevin feels the same with regard to any part of the Pergo installation process.

The dining room and spare bedroom (which is also known as my office/yarn room) are finished, I can start putting the place back together. I feel like we've been living in a warehouse full of random stuff for weeks now. It got so bad this weekend that it was impossible to reach the far end of the living room without channelling our inner ninjas and creating a path over several pieces of furniture.

Most excitedly, I will soon have my desktop hooked back up, which means I can return to the joy of posting high quality photos instead of cell phone shots like this...


While Kevin and the kids fought with the last room of Pergo yesterday, I hid safely away in our bedroom where I'd set up the sewing machine and ironing board and set to creating valances for our bedroom (above) and the dining room. I had a really hard time finding fabric I loved, so I ended up with fabric I mostly liked. Somehow, I ended up making them all a little shorter than they probably should have been, but I was erring on the side of not blocking out any of the precious natural light our dark little house gets. So. At least they're up there. Even small valances look better than bare, naked windows.

My biggest quandary is what to do with the paint in the spare bedroom. The color I used (which I'd purchased three years ago for my office when it was downstairs and then never ended up using) was called Fall Gold. You'd envision a lovely, warm yellow color with that, wouldn't you? Right. What it ended up being was more of a Screaming Atomic Blazing Sun yellow...


You know how when you're knitting and you get that little niggling feeling that something is not quite right, but you ignore it because you're sure you're gauge is really just fine and you've followed the directions correctly, only to knit the whole damn thing and find that not only was your gauge way off, but you only did half of the raglan increases you were supposed to do, so the sweater you just finished would fit a very fat giraffe buy probably no human you know? Well, this yellow room is my fat giraffe sweater of this house project. Above is the first swatch that did not adequately trigger the expected "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger" signal in my mind, thus allowing me to put not one but two coats of it on the walls. Granted, it was midnight when I put the first coat on. I was sure it would be better in the daylight. And it would be less intense with a second coat, right? Darker? At one point, I was lulled into believing it was cheerful and reminded me of sunflowers. Um. Yeah. Attack of the giant sunflowers that want to EAT YOU!

Sigh.

I do not have it in me to repaint this room, or even to apply any of the possible decorative "fixes" I found when I Googled "toning down bright paint" (I am clearly not the only person to contend with this issue, and it also seems that yellow is the number one color people have this trouble with). So, I'm going to remain optimistic and hope that once I have everything IN the room, and have things hung on the walls (lots and lots of things, LOL), maaaaaybe the yellow won't seem so freakishly insane. Denial clearly has a long statute of limitations.

1 comment:

Kathryne said...

I once painted my living room over again FOUR times. And not just one patch or one wall, but the ENTIRE thing!!! At this point, you just need to start school and let the sunflowers grow on you.