A Strange and Disconcertingly Productive Week

Saturday 1/3: The drywall finishers worked for a little while in the morning and said that they need to wait until Monday or Tuesday to do the "final" sanding because the mud needed to dry enough first.

Sunday 1/4: Surprise! They showed up with 5 additional people to completely sand all the walls. I was at my brunch gig and by the time I got there they were gone. Apparently, suddenly, the walls were dry enough a day earlier than inspected, but they showed up before they knew that for sure so who knows.

Doug informed me that they expected to start spraying the primer the next day and we needed to completely vacuum all of the walls and floors to get the house completely free of wallboard dust. So that's what we did from 4:00 pm until 3:00 am. Utterly miserable filthy hellish work.

Monday 1/5: We finished the vacuuming from 6:00 am until 10:00 am. That's right, we only got 2 1/2 hours of sleep. It was not a good day. They put plastic over all of the windows and fixtures and sprayed the upstairs.

Tuesday 1/6: Doug went over to the house early. I was attempting to sleep in and get an actual 7 hours (which I didn't) when Doug suddenly came home and woke me up with the news that we needed to buy the finish colors as soon as possible. Um, I thought I was going to be doing that painting, but whatever.

I wasn't really quite ready to make a final decision - I hadn't even been given a deadline. I was kind of freaking out about having to make such important decisions in such a hurry. Doug was in on the color selection process so it became a little more involved and complicated, but we picked what we thought were some decent colors. We knew a couple of the colors were a little over the top, but in our sleep-deprived state we were feeling a little adventurous.

Wednesday 1/7: They started painting the living/dining room. My first reaction to the color in there was a mixture of horror and glee. I think Doug thought the color was a little too crazy, but he was willing to wait to pass judgement. The kitchen was being painted a color called silver gray and I immediately didn't like it, but didn't say anything. Doug seemed to like it okay. I was embarrassed that I picked such an ugly color which had looked so nice on the paint chip. We had the hallway paint but they didn't get to that, fortunately.

It was raining like crazy and all of the windows had plastic over them. The lighting was a couple of flourescent strips so it was really dingy. The living room color which I had been admiring for months on the paint chip looked super hideous in this light and the kitchen looked even worse.

By the end of the day, after everyone had left, I finally voiced my displeasure about the colors, which looked absolutely horrible together, and also the way in which I'd been forced to select them. I've done a lot of painting, and I'm picky about colors, so I usually buy just a pint, see how it looks, and then adjust accordingly before I commit to a couple gallons. And I do one room at a time.

When I told Doug I wanted to repaint he was not too happy about that. I showed him the colors I was thinking about and he agreed that they looked better. I told him that I wanted to paint the rest of the house later because railroading me now would only lead to additional regrettable choices. Then I told him I wanted to get rid of the kitchen color ASAP and he said his usual "I think we should wait." "For what?" I wondered. Anyway Wednesday was a horrible day that did not conclude in a satisfactory manner.

Thursday, 1/8: Doug woke me up and said he'd decided (overnight, apparently) that his choice of eggshell for the finish was a mistake and that I should hurry up and buy a new kitchen color and change the hall color too if I wanted to. Even though we had already bought 4 gallons of eggshell finish paint for the hall, he wanted to replace it with flat.

I am not a morning person so I usually gear my brain up for the next day before I fall asleep so that I won't have to think too hard the next morning. So it doesn't always work so well for me to be awakened with the announcement of an exciting new change of plans. But today, after I recovered from my disbelief, everything worked out great.

I decided, since I suddenly had a choice again, to use the new color in both the kitchen and the stairwell. It's a creamy light slightly greenish yellow and it looks lovely. It also seems to have calmed down and beautified the sort of chartreuse color of the living room. It looks amazing in the sunlight. And if it looks too weird after we move in I'll change it to something more sedate but so far I like it more each time I see it. The hall and stairwell color is definitely a keeper.

Tommorrow we look at countertop materials and in the afternoon we are going to start installing our kitchen cabinets. I'm so excited!

So far, our wall color scheme seems to be heading in the direction of greenish-yellow (celery-ish), and various shades of blue and purple. I'm not going to decide on any of the bathroom colors until after the tile is in.

These are the two brightest/deepest colors we will be using. In these photos they don't look as bright as they really are.

I'll be smiling in this room from now until we come to our senses and repaint it - but maybe we won't come to our senses. Why start now?

This dark purple tones down the eastern light in the morning, is quite vibrant during the day, and is an excellent sleeping color at night.