Today I painted my old bedroom again, which is now Maddie’s room. This bedroom’s paint color has almost always been a thorn in my side, even though I’ve repainted it numerous times. Paint just doesn’t look good in there. I don’t have this problem anywhere else in the house, so I am not indecisive, nor do I have problems making a commitment.
I believe this room was light pink when we moved in 11 years ago, with matching cat pee-soaked shag carpet. I began the transformation by putting a wallpaper border on the wall next to the ceiling, and painting the walls light yellow. I had a matching blue and yellow comforter. Our mattresses were on the floor, but hey – we didn’t need a bedskirt, OK?
A few years later, while pregnant with Rebecca, I tried to tear off the wallpaper border. Uh uh. I ended up chiseling through plaster. So…Marcus put up crown molding, and I put a NEW very wide navy floral border next to the molding. Light yellow paint still prevailed on the walls.
After Rebecca’s arrival, I begged Marcus to let me paint again, but he told me I just had to live with it for a while. A joke began around the house about pregnant women decorating while under hormonal duress. I fretted for several years, but finally talked myself into scraping off the horrid 2 layers of borders I had put up. This took days and days with a rented steamer. (Side note: I have never steamed off wallpaper when it was less than 90 degrees outside, making it around 120 in the room I’m working in.)Then I had to fix the wall underneath. Then I did the right thing: I painted my room “Tuscan Terra Cotta.” I loved it. It actually made my room warmer. My mom pointed out the color was really orange. In fact, it was the same orange she had upholstered on her wing back chairs I grew up with, which I had always ridiculed. I am old enough to realize what goes around comes around, and I was bringing back the 70’s orange. But I like it much better as “Tuscan Terra Cotta.”
The perfect color was moved to our new bedroom after Marcus built our addition. Then we needed to repaint our room for Maddie. What did I choose? Light yellow. More hideous than before. Maddie and I admitted we had made a mistake a few months after painting. You can never admit you’ve made a mistake right away, because it was too much work and it wouldn’t matter – I’m not painting it again anyway.
Maddie and I had been looking for the perfect color for months, and finally found it in Steve and Jen A.’s new family room when we helped their family move in. I asked Jen for the color, and we were in.
We didn’t get off to a good start, because Maddie had Amelia Bedeliaitis. She was so excited I was finally painting, she taped off all the trim for me in the morning. Unfortunately, she put all the tape(even the crown molding) on the wall next to the trim. I really couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I asked her what her rationale was, and she said you paint the wall, then pull off the tape and paint around the trim. Hmmmm.
After pulling all the tape off, I started trimming with my glorious “Sage Gray.” It looked pretty blue when I first applied it. By the time I had gotten about half done, Ashley walked in, looked at me askance, and told me it looked like Aunt Rachel’s living room. It’s blue. I feigned a smile and painted on, starting to have my doubts. Actually, it didn’t look like Aunt Rachel’s blue, it looked like Aunt Naomi’s blue dining room.
Then came Marcus. He said it looked like the blue border I had put up when I was pregnant with Rebecca. That wasn’t very encouraging.
Katherine came in independently of Marcus, repeating the same verdict.
To my credit, the paint dried and turned “Sage Gray.” It is a bit dark, but nice. It looks similar to the color Aunt Naomi painted her family room a few years ago, but definitely not the blue in her dining room. Go figure.
Note: Go to the library and check out a book about Amelia Bedelia if you don’t know who she is!
