Horrified

Was watching HGTV (I thought I never watch those kind of shows, but apparently I do - once in a while!) yesterday while putting away groceries.

Here's what I saw - a room makeover for a young girl. She hated her country-style bookcase, she's a more modern young thing.

So the decorator paints out the bookcase, so far so good, right? WRONG! The decorator didn't even scuff sand the old finish, much less prime out the piece, before applying hip red paint. Guess what? That trendy red is going to look tacky in no time. The poor kid can end up scratching the paint simply by dragging a book across the surface. What happens if she accidentally bangs into the corner of it? She may even be able to PEEL off the paint in large strips if she sees a tempting corner just waiting for her bored little fingers to give a tug.

It will take SOOOOOOO much more work to strip the entire piece, prime it, then repaint it. I lay money that it would never happen, instead it will just sit there looking crappy until it gets junked.

Why put so much work into transforming a space but take stupid shortcuts?

Maybe "horrified" is too strong a word, but I felt bad about the stupidness of it all. And the fact that people will see this episode and think they can do it that way, too.

At Last!!!!!!

So. Holidays are quickly approaching and it's beyond time to repaint the living room, potentially the dining room and for sure the kitchen. We've had swatches on the living room walls since summer. Beige swatches. Absolutely wrong.

The kitchen has been a saga of sorts. You'd think with all my work with color that choosing my own would be a snap. Right? Well, the chocolate walls are not making me a happy paint princess. A color might work just fine and still be wrong, that's the situation we have going on in the kitchen. I love to eat chocolate, but it's not so great for the north-facing kitchen.

Regarding the living room - much as it pains me to say this, it's true: Mom was right again!

She suggested a color to try for the living room, C2's Bamboo. While it's too dark, I had a C2 Sampler pint made of the formula at both 75% and 50% strength. I even had a 50% formulation made with no black pigment, just to see if the spectrophotometer could match to color accurately without using any black pigments.

It's great! I think my trick of eliminating the black pigment kept the lightened color from mushing out to a blechy greige tone. Sometimes lightened colors can loose their character and vibrancy when cut down too far. Then they become shades of grey on the wall. Or they look like "why bother" versions of the richer color - too safe and weakened from the original.

It looks great in both the living room AND the kitchen. Surprising about the kitchen, who knew the same color would look so great in both spaces? It's just a great color that supports all the millwork and furnishings - I love it. I might try lightening the living room formulation a tad more, maybe C2 Bamboo at about 40%... just a titch lighter... but even so, I really like the color a lot. It's quite neutral without resorting to safe beige. Lots of yellow/olive undertones, it's great. I can't wait to get it painted!

Who knows, maybe this color will even last in our house more than 6 months...