Raw Drip

I’m not sure how many of you out there have a great room floor plan but I can assure you that the same expansive space that seemed to say “modern living” also poses some substantial decorating challenges. Paint color is a particularly challenging matter since the rooms are ill-defined and the spaces flow one into the next. Where does the color stop & start? What about choosing a color for a part of the room that gets a lot of natural light, versus a part of the room that’s a little darker? Model home tours have taught me that the right paint color in a great room will carry your eye around the space and make it feel spacious and yet intimate and cozy, while the wrong color can make it feel clinical, cold & stark. In my great room, the cheap builder-provided wall paint in a soulless shade of yellow-beige had always made our space feel like the latter.

On top of the coldness of the paint color, the bottom 4 ft of any given wall in our family room was spotted with years of accumulated filth consisting largely of little kid finger prints, ugly black scuff marks and various splatters. Enhancing the hodge-podge of filth were the smears caused by my failed attempts at using the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to remove stains. I found that, much like most male versions of clean, Mr. Clean’s magic seems to stop at cleaning the surface. His clean merely left a shiny smear behind – enough to indicate an attempt at cleaning, but not enough to actually defeat the mocking stain beneath.

So, I vowed to make it a priority to get some washable paint on my walls – pronto. This task involved me repeatedly going to my local paint store and staring at a sea of tiny paint chips for about 30 minutes before leaving with my top 3 color choices, at which time I would conclude the ritual with a frustrating exchange with my husband.

Dutifully sharing my paint chips with Dick, he would offer insightful commentary such as, “I don’t like how gray this one is, but if that’s what you’re going for…”

“But it’s sage green, dear. Green tempered with a bit of gray. I thought we both agreed that a sage would be a nice neutral for us.”

Dick, leaning in a bit and squinting at the tiny chip in my hand would inevitably respond, “Well, that gray looks awfully greenish to me.”

Surely, you must feel my pain here…

After months of indecision and painful decorating discourse with Dick, I felt like I needed to make a move. As the only one in our family with a semi-accurate perception of color and a “vision” for the look of the room – as the HGTV designers say, our “color story” – I decided that it was up to me to pick a color and put it on the wall. I decided to go a little bold and pick a tan color with a hint of lime green called “Harmonic Tan”. Ah…harmony in a family living space. What could be better, right?

I started by applying paint to the far wall in the family room. A few hours and two coats later, I really began to love how our color story was developing. The color on this wall told a story that was interesting, dramatic, and said “tropical” without heading into bad Florida-themed motel room or Pier 1 territory. When Dick saw the color up on the wall, he liked our color story, too and we both agreed that it was time to say goodbye to boring vanilla beige and say hello to some harmony!

So the following Saturday, Dick cleared the kids out of the house for the afternoon while I donned my painting togs and did my prep work & painting. Practically skipping around the room with the roller in hand, the Harmonic Tan went up easily over the ugly beige. Being that Dick views most every project of mine with a critical eye, I kept focused on a flawless application of the color, and I was less concerned about the final outcome of our color story. Besides, paint always looks so different once it’s dried.

But three hours later, as I stood back admiring my handiwork in the fading daylight, I noticed that the room felt dark and dreary. I turned on all the bright overhead can lights we usually avoided using. Hm. Now it was brighter and dreary. My heart sank.

For the most unobservant person I’ve ever known, when Dick walked in he was immediately impressed with the shocking direction our color story had taken.

“This is interesting (which is always code for “not good”). I can’t put my finger on it, but I think it’s too green.”

“Uh, yeah. I thought it looked pretty tan with the sun shining on it, but now that the light has changed, I think it’s more green than tan”, I reluctantly admitted.

The truth was Harmonic Tan didn’t seem very harmonic with the other walls. That hint of lime green that attracted me to the color in the first place seemed magnified into a Kermit the Frog shade of green when applied all around the room. The way the light bounced off each wall, the subtleness of the green now seemed intensified into a sickeningly brown/yellow green that reminded me of living in a bowl of algae, or my grandmother’s cira 1975, avacado green & gold kitchen.

Somewhere along the way, things had gone terribly wrong and now it was all my fault. Wasn’t I supposed to be the creative genius – the one with the natural ability to coordinate color? This always happens to me when I get overly confident about anything. Why don’t I ever learn??

In a desperate attempt to redeem myself and write a happier ending to our color story, I told Dick that it takes paint a while to “cure” and that the color might change as the days wore on. He looked skeptical, but at least it bought me some time to start searching for all the discarded paint chips I’d shoved into my desk drawer. After narrowing down my selections to 3 colors with more of a gray undertone, I pitched my plan to Dick. It was going to be one more Saturday out with the kids, one more gallon of paint for me and hopefully, a better color on the walls at the end of the day.

Once more I donned my painting togs and taped off my borders. Up on the ladder rolling on a pleasant new shade called “Gobi Desert”, I finally made peace with beige. Admittedly, embracing the beige of the Gobi Desert was a far less colorful way to conclude our color story, but the end result is much cozier and more livable than the preceding colors. Besides, now when the kids smear their gooey little paws on the wall, a quick wipe of the sponge is all that’s needed to keep it clean. Another bonus: I figure the additional layers of paint can only serve as more wall reinforcement in the event of a hurricane or other natural disaster. So there! I found a silver lining to my algae green cloud, after all.

And I learned that, for us, it wasn’t easy being green. With a bit of sadness, I’ve begun to accept the fact that my color story lacks “punch” or “drama” as they say on the all those design shows, but fortunately I more than make up for that in the rest of my life. Maybe beige really is the way to go when the rest of your life packs so much color.