THE OLD PAINT COLOR IS "GONE WITH THE WIND"

Do you have a good eye for picking paint colors?

I've gotten better at it over the years, 

but have certainly had to paint over my share of mistakes.

Perhaps my biggest paint fail was 14 years ago, when we first bought our house.

Jewel tones were "in" at the time, and I just HAD to have a red guest room. 

 I'd clipped many magazine photos of cozy red bedrooms, 

and had a vision in my head as to how I wanted mine to look.

There was only one problem -- 
it seems that my mind's eye must have been a little color blind. 

The first time I saw the red paint on the wall,

I freaked, and was sure the painter ordered the wrong color.
  That Italian Tuscan feel I was going for?
Uh, no.
The room was a blinding scarlet red, 

which would have been ideal, had I been running a brothel, 

but as I was not planning to open one any time soon,

the paint had to go. 

I had a bit of a hissy fit in front of the painter,

who told me how difficult it would be to paint over it.
But, I persisted.

"Frankly, my dear painter, I don't give a damn -- it's SCARLET! 

Eventually, the color was corrected.

Since then, all of the rooms in my house have been painted over many times. 
 I think we have worked our way through every color in the Benjamin Moore fan deck.

We were scheduled to start painting in September, 
and when I say "we," I don't mean us. 
We hired a painter, because, well, This Is Us......
 neither one of us has the initials DIY.
   
When it came time to choose a color for the living and dining rooms,  
I kept procrastinating. 

 "I can't think about that right now.

If I do, I'll go crazy.
I'll think about that tomorrow." 

I was afraid of making a costly mistake.

Time went by, and before I knew it, 
I had painted myself into the proverbial corner.
Three days before the painter was coming, I still hadn't picked a color.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I couldn't wait 
for the old color to be gone with the wind.
 I wanted to "lighten up, and go as neutral as possible.

However, my gold dining room drapes looked awful 
with any neutral beige that I considered.

As much as I wanted to get away from the
 gold Concorde Ivory that covered my walls for the last dozen years,
 I had to find something with some yellow tones in it.

Here's the requisite "before" picture of the living room in all it's Concorde Ivory glory.
It's not as yellow as it appears in these photos.
Click here for the true color.

Living Room Before: Concorde Ivory by Benjamin Moore

 I took all of my fabric swatches to a local paint store,

and decided on Weston Flax, feeling confident in my decision 😳.

The day before the painter arrived, I woke up in a pool of sweat,
the way one does when one knows they are a paint can away from a terrible mistake.

 It was too dark.........
 it was too yellow..........
   it had too much green in it... 

No doubt about it........
It just ain't fittin'.

Fortunately, the paint hadn't been purchased yet,

and under no-pressure-whatsover-so-what-if-the-painter-is-coming-tomorrow 😓,  
I settled on Windham Cream, and hoped for the best.  

Well, fiddle-dee-dee.....
as it was put on the walls, I breathed a half-sigh of relief.

Yeah, it's still in the yellow family,
but at least it is 50 shades of gold lighter than it was before.   

Click here for the true color.

Now that it's all done, and everything has been put back into place,
I'm quite pleased with it.  

I'm sure my living room will go through another color transformation sometime in the future,
but probably not until I ditch my current furniture, and start fresh.
I'D DO IT TOMORROW IF I COULD.
I'm looking forward to that.

I took this photo while I was playing around with the mantel decor.

 
  After all, tomorrow is another day. 

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