Saturday, July 4, 2009

Project #2-the upstairs hallway

The hallway before painting. The boys are supervising.

After my friend and I painted the bathroom, I decided I needed to paint the hallway too. I decided I wanted something in the brown family and was going to go with a neutral shade of brown. I like light colors. I needed to go with something that would look okay with the yellow side wall I was not about to attempt to paint. I am really bad at these things, so I had my friend come over and help me pick out the color. The final choice was "Tender Twig" by Valspar. It was a much bolder color than I would have picked!


"Tender Twig" is the one in the middle.

I am not impressed with the paint itself, but I do like the color. Painting the hallway proved to be more emotional than I expected though. I got partway through it and was thinking about how I was proud of myself for stepping outside my comfort zone and how James would have been proud of me for that too. And I thought about how much James would have hated the color. He liked a very clean look. If it had been up to him, our walls would have been white and we would have had stainless steel appliances. I informed him that I was not living in an institution until I had to. So we compromised-pale, neutral wall colors and black appliances.

I started crying and panicked that I couldn't finish painting the walls a color a James would hate. I needed to stop and put it back the way it was. It did not help that I was listening to a compilation CD of hits from the '70's and these thoughts occurred while "If You Leave Me Now," by Chicago was playing. (A smart person would have changed CDs). So, I sent my friend a text message that it was making me cry knowing I was painting the hall a color James would hate. She responded with the following:

"James is more than likely laughing at seeing you upset at what you think would bother him, on the other side everything is good and seen in a different light."

I replied that James was probably laughing at me for falling down the stairs when I was trying to hard to be quiet. (My friends' son is staying with me and I was trying to go downstairs to let the dogs out quietly so I wouldn't wake him up. I slipped and fell down three steps. I'm okay-raspberry on my knee and a bruised big toe is the extent of the damage).

So, I finished painting the hallway. I really am proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and I do like the new color. It's a little weird to step out of my bedroom and see brown instead of yellow and I need to do some touch-up work as there are quite a few places where I pulled up the paint with the tape. Next up is going to be the office, which is going to be blue. This was not part of the original plan, but I am trying to learn to be more flexible. I am still planning to paint the bedroom purple. Eventually, I will get tired of painting-either that or I will run out of things to paint.

The end result

And, unlike light green paint, brown paint does actually resemble the paint chip when applied to the dog.






3 comments:

Shannon said...

I absolutley LOVE the colored walls!!! I have been wanting to paint so many walls in my house, but no time. Four kids leave no time! If you run out of things to paint... call me! Great job!

Rick said...

At first I wasn't too thrilled with the darker colr, but when you showed the final product, I really liked it!!!

Great Job!!! I am sure James loves it too!!

Great post!!!

Sari said...

Great job!