I decided--while I have Jaro the Terrific available--to extend my renovation project and paint the house as well. In two days, it's been power washed and painted, all but the trim, and I love it!
People often ask me why I paint so often, and I just think, "I wish you knew my friend Janet!" If Janet O paints a room and doesn't like it, she paints it again the next day. She's my inspiration. Her house is an ever-changing canvas.
Or someone will say she liked it the way it was. I liked my pink house, but now I also love my not-pink house. It feels like a brand new canvas: white with facia a shade or two darker than my car.
We used a sample of the trim color on one portion of the house today and it wasn't quite right. I couldn't figure out why until I called my friend Debbie, the Paint Lady. Debbie has a great eye for color and knows all the colors in the Behr palette like old friends. Turns out the first blue I picked had too much red in it and the eye read it as purple.
I learned this: If you are using two shades of the same color, they should be in the same color family. How did I get this far without knowing that? What a revelation! I've always just held up the paint chip and done the eye-squint test.
I also learned that you need to take paint chips out into the sunshine instead of choosing them inside the paint store.
At first, when I see the not-quite-right color, I panic a little. I really like to get it right the first time.
What gets me through every blunder are Carlene's words, "Everything is tuition." I pretend I'm in the graduate school of color, and every day is a pop quiz.
One change changes everything--and doing this has been (I'm guessing) like making a painting. A color in isolation is very different from the same color next to another. And a tiny paint chip is never enough of an indicator by which to color an entire wall. I have to be willing to "fail miserably"--I believe it was Brene Brown who advocated this--to get where I want to go.
Painting is my journey of this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment