I'm a sucker for home improvement shows. Paul is not. He can see what's coming, so he changes to the tennis channel or the clean your toilet channel or any channel that does not involve a couple happily transforming their home in a weekend. Yes, I know those couples have professional help and money from the network, but that doesn't mean we couldn't add another room next weekend....
Actually, our whole house is a home improvement project. We built it ourselves, we being defined as Paul. But I'll write about that later, after I'm finished talking it over with my therapist some more.
Because we built the house "ourselves" and because we barely moved in one month before Lily was born (and I was working full-time so we never really moved in), there are some spaces that are still asking to be decorated the first time, much less getting a makeover.
One such space is a large, nameless, formless void at the top of the stairs. As you know, nature abhors a void, so this one is filled with stuff that doesn't go anywhere else. Or can't fit anywhere else, to be more precise. Or stuff we just don't know what to do with. And also things bound for the attic that haven't made it there yet. I get depressed every time I walk through there. And I walk through every time I walk into my office or go into Lily's bedroom or the guest room, which as you know from Domestic Rule #3: Use your guest room for storage, is really barricaded to prevent unwelcome guests.
One day recently I glimpsed the tail-end of "Trading Spaces" and saw a vision of what I want to do with this space. The room they had done wasn't a bit like our Void but that's no reason not to go with The Vision.
Everything goes but the exercise equipment, a bookcase, desk and Lily's computer station. We'll paint the walls blue-green and accent everything else with black, since the exercise equipment is black. All those family pictures that suddenly came my way when three family members closed their households will be reframed in black frames, and I'll make black and white valences for the windows. It will be sort of understated and dramatic at the same time. I have no idea what that means, but I think what I'm trying to say is that I will smile when I see it and when I'm exercising I won't get meaner and madder than usual because it's a soothing, happy color.
We're doing all this this weekend. Except for the sewing part, and the re-framing part, and probably the painting part. And certainly the part where the smiling happy couple is just having a really nice together experience.
Here's how far along we are already. I picked out a paint color. Then Paul said, "Why don't you do some kind of textured or faux paint (he didn't say faux, though he speaks French, he's not a faux-sayer but that's what he meant) because those &*($&@#()& framers I used messed up this one place....."
The place isn't perfect, but I don't see it like Paul does. And I enjoy faux painting and special effects. We've sponged the kitchen, rag-rolled one bathroom, leatherized another (Ralph Lauren special paint that costs a fortune and does not resemble leather or any other substance in the known universe -- if it hadn't been so expensive and hard to do, we would have painted over it. Funny how that works.) I've painted a sunburst on the dining room ceiling and we painted harlequins in the Prayer and Poker Room (where he plays cards with his friends and I meditate and pray -- talk about a multi-purpose room!). Oh, and I've done suede paint, too. And marblelized some furniture. I'm not artistic, but I can follow directions. I listen to books on tape and get great pleasure out of the whole process. At least for the first two hours.
Anyway, so I abandon my paint chip and go to Lowe's for something fun and special that will hide the framer's little oddity. And after much agonizing over which color and texture the whole family likes, we finally select two and go to Lowe's to buy whichever is cheaper. I won't tell you how many hours it took us to find this out (and we ran through FOUR sales people), but both of the paint types we selected are new and on the shelves -- and not in the computer yet, so they could not make them the colors we needed. They were unable to tell us when they would be able to sell us the paints! And though they had the stuff, they could not tint it!
Well, now. We go to plan B, which is to just buy some of this other stuff that they promise they can tint for us. It is also a special effects paint, and I know better, but I am so over the whole paint selecting business that I just select a color that sort of resembles the color I previously selected. So, they go to get the paint for us. Turns out it will be $300 just for the bottom coat!
To paint The Void?
So I'm back to picking out paint chips. All I want is a happy blue-green. We find one in one of their color idea catalogs. Then I pick up the paint chip that is supposed to match. The catalog color and the paint chip color, though they bear the same name, are not similar. One is blue and one is green. We ask paint salesman #4 to find out which is right. We never see him again. I take a bunch of paint chips home.
We decide on a beautiful blue-green color, which Paul picks up and brings home. He slaps some on the wall. It is not blue-green, though it is a pretty shade of blue.
And I look at the paint chip again. Why did I think a color named "High Noon" would be bluish-green? What planet's sky is blue-green at noon?
We've already bought the paint. I may put a green colorwash over it. I may not.
I call my niece, who is an architect and very good at these sorts of things, as well as everything else. "I can't find a blue-green," I say.
She's been looking for one, too. And says she can't find it.
And now I know why. Outside of the Crayola box, there is no blue-green.
