it's only paint

My family is going to be here in a week, the house is still not quite yet put together and I'm in the middle of a big work project. As you can imagine, my plate feels very full right now. And so with the house remodel project not going as fast as I had planned. I had expected it to be completed before we returned home from Europe, and six weeks later, we're still not done.

We have made a lot of progress in the last two weeks though -- the ceilings were finally mudded and re-sanded, primed and textured. And so all that was left was to paint. Paint the walls in the two-story entry hall, paint the walls in the stairwell, and paint the hallways upstairs and downstairs, and of course, all of the baseboards and door trims in all of those areas.

Jeff was much more deliberate about prepping this time. Last weekend, the whole house was sealed off in plastic. I couldn't get into the kitchen, any of the bathrooms, and barely any of the bedrooms. So last Saturday I sat holed up in my bedroom, hostage to the remodel. Fortunately Rick had his motorcycle course all last weekend so that he didn't have to endure too much of the inconvenience. I took the opportunity to visit Redhead Momma and Janya -- thrilled to see my friends and to have an excuse to stay away.

And then on Sunday afternoon, we were ready to paint. Now, this I could handle. The end was in sight. Jeff and Andrea were right there painting the gigantic wall leading up the stairs the coffee color that I had selected as an accent wall to appear as an extension of the livingroom. For the hallways and main areas, I'd selected a tan color. The last time I painted the hallways, the color was too light and showed way too much -- Beaux has left marks on every wall and corner he consistently rubs up against. So on Sunday night, we'd made good progress on the hallway downstairs and the big coffee-colored accent wall.

One problem...as we started to pay attention, we realized that in darker lights, there really wasn't a whole lot of contrast between the coffee wall and the tan walls. Oh no! Rick and I sat down in the livingroom to assess. And as he began to share his idea, I went into a complete meltdown.

I was realizing we needed to select a lighter neutral color for all of the main areas, and I'd already invested time and money into a color that wasn't going to work. Rick went down a divergent path, and one that I wasn't prepared to wrap my head around.

How about doing the downstairs hallway in an accent color? I promptly replied, "Not solving the problem at hand." He went on to explain that a burnt orange would look really good. I flipped out and said, "ok, if we paint this orange, then what color is this wall, and that wall, and so on."

Mostly I think the stress of finishing the house before my family gets here, compounded by the knowledge that my work schedule would be heinous the week before they got here. So this was the only week to focus and finish up the house.

Reduced to tears of frustration, I agreed that at 9 pm on Monday night, we'd go to Lowe's and find a couple of burnt orange colors to test on the wall. After all, it's only paint, he says.

We picked out three variations and had them mixed up in quarts. Ten o'clock at night, and Rick was immediately painting swatches of orange on the tan wall we'd painted the night before. Two of them were clearly too dark, and there was one, that I could live with. Fortunately, we did agree on that point.

We have to make a decision quick since my sister and brother-in-law were coming over on Tuesday after work to help paint again, and I wanted to make sure we were wasting our efforts this time. I called Andrea and warned her about our change of plans, and on the way home I picked up a gallon of Faded Clay from Lowe's. And so on Tuesday night, our too-dark-tan hallway became Faded Clay. And I proceeded to finish painting the hallway upstairs with the tan color. After Andrea and Jeff left, we sat down to take in the freshly painted walls. The burnt orange was really starting to grow on me.

And then, the next bump. Rick liked the burnt orange so much, and now looking at the tan in the upstairs hallway, he threw out the idea of also painting the hallway upstairs in Faded Clay. Well, why not? The walls and trim are already taped. If we're going to do it, we better make the change now.

And so last night, I came home from work and proceeded to re-paint the upstairs hallway burnt orange. Rick and I were making great progress, and I was getting optimistic that we'd actually get this project done before my family shows up next weekend.

We stood in the kitchen last night, eating our late dinner and seeing the contrast of the burnt orange juxtaposed against the butter kitchen walls, which I painted when I first moved into the house. With the color scheme coming together, we both realized that we need to find a richer, goldenrod color for the kitchen. I added this to the list of projects for after the family reunion. We'd also determined we weren't fans of the gray color that we had Jeff paint in our master bedroom, so there were still some projects ahead of us.

Rick is getting pretty ambitious and now thinks he wants to tackle the kitchen color before my parents get here. Not sure that we really will, but we're going to head over to Lowe's after work and take a look at colors. If we do this, that means we only have Saturday morning and Sunday to get it done. Not to mention all of the time I'm going to need this next week to put the house back together to prepare for our out-of-town guests.

It's only paint, after all.