Paint Blues

This week started off and appears to be ending on a downward "lilt" as my fellow housewife, Kate, likes to say. Despite being a overall crappy week, following other crappy weeks, I suppose the silver lining is that the groundhog saw his shadow! Bring on the spring! We're in the midst of a blog overhaul (and I'm working on starting a "cousin" blog on food adventures) but that doesn't mean we have to neglect you, dear readers. Please bear with us while we do a RHoPWC makeover.

[Don't worry, not this type of Real Housewife makeover…]

In the meantime, I'll share my latest home project.Remember when I had that lovely electrician come out and replace all my gross fixtures? We'll I finally had some free time to start re-painting the walls (after he had to tear into them and re-drywall). I headed out to the shed a couple of weekends ago to gather my paint and supplies to touch up my living room wall. Much to my surprise, my paint was frozen! AHHHHHH. I started to [almost] panic and thought, 'OK, I'll try to warm it up!' I brought the paint inside and waited a week before opening it back up. Surprise again - it was separated beyond reconstitution. The paint folks at Home Depot (ooooh remind me to blog about that topic later… have you ever been to the paint section at the HD on Liberia Ave. in Manassas???) said I was S.O.L.

Great. Not only was I so stupid as to leave my paint in the shed during freezing cold temperatures, I also mixed a custom color that is going to be impossible to to match. I had a paint swatch and picture of said paint for years in my "hope book" for house decor ideas -

[Ralph Lauren Organza]

Finally, when we bought this place last spring, I got to use my paint. Well, HD had just stopped carrying Ralph Lauren paint,but they said they could mix it for me because they still had all of the RL formulas and could just use a Glidden base (same as base in RL). They did the best they could, but it was never the right shade. I had (4) 384th's of thalo green added 3 different times, and finally came to a shade I could live with. My beloved Organza was still way more baby blue than I preferred. I'd seen it on a wall in person and loved it's barely there aqua color. On the paint chip - it definitely looks more blue-ish gray. At any rate, I didn't have any paint to touch up my drywall with and mixing a new color to apply to a touch up area (about 7 ft. long and 4 ft. wide) is a total crap shoot.

Plan B -- second mini-panic attack. Then light bulb! I had coveted another similar aqua paint color on the walls of one of my husband and I's all-time favorite food haunts at the beach - Northeast Seafood Kitchen. I had emailed the owners last year inquiring about the paint color and they told me it was White Mint by Duron. PERFECT! A non-custom color that I had seen in person and knew I liked, plus had more of my initially desired green tinge! I ran to our local Duron Paint store and got a quart of White Mint. I put it on my walls in a few test areas that showed natural light differently and I was instantly relieved; I found my solution! I had been at odds with both colors because I didn't want powdery baby blue or old-lady mint green on my walls. I had to have just the right amout of blue and green, but I wanted minimal saturation of pigment for a barely-there look. I decided a long time ago that I wanted my home to have a 'sorbet' palate starting with a color much like Baskin Robin's sherbet Daiquiri Ice. I wanted our main living space to have a soothing aqua color with more green than blue, to complement it's secondary color pal, orange (for accents).

[Duron White Mint - you can't even see it on this small image]

Now, to paint my living room. Again. I guess it'll have to wait until after the Super Bowl… my guests wouldn't appreciate having to tip-toe around the central living area too much.

-Bethany