Dress Stress

 Good Monday morning...a new week with all new possibilities! Hope everyone is on tap for a glorious first week of October!

This past weekend was a big one for our household...the family painting crew showed up to paint the living room/dining room/ kitchen. The "crew" consisted of daughter-in-law Sarah, granddaughter Rachael, daughter Heather and great grandsons Hayden and Riley (who were really no help but a blessed diversion for Grandma!). 

These rooms hadn't been painted since 2008/2009 when I was a lot younger and more energetic. Plus we painted them before we moved the furniture and appliances in following a renovation. So it was quite a bit more of a challenge than I thought right from the get go.

Our first challenge was the color of the paint. I had purchased the paint at Menard's in Mitchell, SD since I like their brand of paint and it is a more reasonably price than some. I spent months pouring over paint samples and holding them up to the furniture and walls and trying to visualize how this was all going to look. And I had finally settled on a pale taupe color that I knew was going to look awesome in the room.

The rooms were previously painted green. I liked the color because it was cool and calming, and I just felt that it was a good color for us. Mike, on the other hand, has never liked the color and was glad that I was changing it out for something more neutral. We were getting ready to paint that first morning, and Mike was making ready for his get away when I asked him if he wanted to stick around and see the color on the wall. He said no, just so it wasn't any longer green, and I hadn't chosen pink or purple! So I thought we were good.

The first few roller swipes told the story...the paint color was awful! The paint was going on PINK! It wasn't a terrible color...for a bedroom! But it's not what I was going for in a living area.

So now what? There was no sense in continuing with that color because it was a sure thing that I wasn't going to like it...and Mike was going to hate it since even he could see it was pink. I knew I could take it back to Menard's for a retint, but since the nearest Menard's was over 2 hours away that was not feasible. At this point I was feeling pretty humble and desperate, so I called Hometown Lumber in Valentine, prepared to have the phone slammed down in my ear, and explained my problem and asked them if they would be willing to help me out. So here's my plug for Hometown Lumber...they are very kind, even when they could have mentioned the wisdom of shopping locally, and said they would see what they could do but couldn't guarantee results since we weren't starting with a white base! 

So as we discussed taking the paint to Valentine, the girls offered to either stay and start on the ceiling (I couldn't mess that color up too bad since it was just ceiling white) or they could come along with me. Obviously I needed help with the paint color since my entire history of choosing paint colors has been a joke! So off we headed to Valentine when we should have been painting.

Two hours later we arrive home with a color we are hoping will be more to our liking. It might have been a shade darker than I would have chosen, but it was so much less pink and much closer to taupe than previously. And, even though I wasn't going to complain about the cost of the "fix" they only charged me $2.50 a gallon to retint, so I was really happy. I did concede to purchase a gallon of paint for the trim since what I had previously chosen wasn't going to work (it looked eggplant purple on the trim!). At any rate, it was all worth the trip and cost because the results were awesome!

The girls painted all day Friday and Saturday until after 9:00 pm. I was hoping to get the walls and baseboard trim painted and figured I could paint the window and door trims, but those gals finished the entire job-minus one door! 

Last evening, as we sat in our living room enjoying a quiet evening of reading, I looked around and had to marvel and the warm glow the walls gave off. The results of the weekend's labors were miraculous! Rachael observed, as we were hanging some of the wall decor, that apparently this shade of taupe should have always been my color as my pictures blend perfectly on the walls!

So here are my take-aways from the weekend:

1. I can't be trusted to pick out paint color. While I know in my mind what I like, it doesn't seem to be my super power to choose a path to get there. In the future, I will be taking along a friend to give me advice and a second opinion...someone I can trust not to rubber stamp my decision. And I am certain I will never be asked to be anyone else's color advisor! 

2. We have way too much stuff, even after I've been decluttering for several years, to fit in our small house. As the girls gathered up knick-knacks and items off the furniture to get it out of the way, I made up my mind that much of it isn't going back there. And it's not going into a box to be stored! We are making another step toward a minimalist look.

3. I am highly suggestive. The trim color, we observed, is the exact color of chocolate ice cream. Needless to say, I took a trip to the grocery store for a snack of chocolate ice cream! (I've got to get past this as it could be detrimental to my diet!)

4 And while I've known this for a long time, this weekend brought the knowledge back to me full force...I have awesome children and grandchildren. Painting is not easy work, but those gals showed up with paint clothes, paint supplies, food and determination to make their mama/grandma happy! Then they shooed me off ladders and out of the way and told me to play with babies while they painted and trimmed and cleaned up behind themselves. 

So operation "paint the living room/dining room/kitchen" was a success and I am happy! And this is a great start to not only a new week but a new month.

Happy October! Hope your month is as blessed as mine has started out to be!

PS...sorry there are no pictures, the rooms are still in disarray. I still have to use my imagination to see how it will look when I get things all put back.