Friday, January 24, 2014

Stripy hat and yellow walls


Yesterday, Daughter 1 and I took Grandson and Granddaughter to the Botanics. It was sunny but chilly. There were interesting bumpy bits of path to stand on.


He wore his boots because there were occasional puddles.


There were signs of spring.
 There were interesting shadows.


And there was what has become the tradition of sitting on the little wall for a while, in sight of the car, regardless of the fact that my parking ticket is about to run out. At least I'd be able watch from a distance as a traffic warden descended on my vehicle to give me a fine.

What was Mr L doing meanwhile? you ask.

Well, he was not painting the kitchen. He'd been doing that for a few days and had progressed as far as applying colour to the walls. I don't know if you're the same, but I'm not good at judging whether a paint which looks just right when applied from a sample mini-pot on to a piece of paper will look equally good all over a large wall. It's not that I don't know the problem. The problem is that the colour looks much more intense on the wall and sometimes also - just - well - different. I know this and I still find it difficult.

The previous colour of the kitchen walls was pale lemony yellow. I fancied a bit of a change and flirted with samples of pale green but in the end, for various reasons not unconnected with the above, decided to play safe and chose a shade called Soft Cream. I not unnaturally expected this to be cream-coloured.

It was pink. Well, perhaps not strictly pink. But certainly pinkish cream. And since the curtains are white with yellow, green and blue, I did not want to introduce pink into the mix. So after painting one wall, Mr L stopped for further instructions.

(He's a good man. You can see why I've kept him in post for forty years. We both remember the time when he'd finished painting the sitting room (also yellow, coincidentally... or maybe not...) and I decided that it wasn't quite right. Yes, he repainted the whole room with hardly even a reproachful sigh.)

This was the point that we had reached yesterday when I went to collect Daughter 1 and the little ones. As we put the children's coats on, my gaze fell on Daughter 1's kitchen walls. Well, fancy that: they were the exact colour that I'd had in mind at first: very pale buttery yellow. And she remembered what paint it was, and it was still available.

Simple! Yes, yes, it would indeed have been even simpler if I'd thought of that in the first place. But he's done it now and it looks very nice.

11 comments:

  1. To think that there are people who are paid to think up unlikely names for paint colours.......

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  2. Anonymous12:22 am

    Oh, I do wish that you would lend him to me; I used to be able to decorate my home, but time has shrunk me and I can no longer reach to the ceiling.

    I hope that you will be happy...

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  3. if you had stuck with the pink i would have sent you those three christmas quilts with the pesky pink snowmen - ha ha ha!!!

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  4. Since you have just celebrated your Ruby Anniversary, I feel confident in saying that you each have the spouse that you deserve!

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  5. That seems very hard on Mr Life, Joan!

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  6. I would also feel nervous about my ability to judge whether a paint colour would look right in a room. I'm sure people like you and me are why there are such things as interior designers. Well done Mister Life for painting and patience and your daughter for remembering her shades.

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  7. I am so bad at this that when we had the extension built I tried to persuade the builder to pick the paint colour. He refused. Sadly.

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  8. Such a cute hat - as bright as your green grass and blossoms - color me jealous! Choosing just the right paint shade is SO difficult. My living room color was not what I had in mind, but instead of going back to the paint store I kept telling myself it would look better when dry/in different light/in different seasons. Wrong.

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  9. I understand completely, my poor husband has painted out dining room 4 times and I'm still not sure it's the right color.

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  10. Signs of Spring! Oh, my. We've had about nine inches of snow in the last 24 hours! And they expect more snow through Tuesday which will be 1 degree Fahrenheit.....I'll try to console myself with looking at your photos!

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  11. Well, I guess I'm going to have to come and see your beautiful new kitchen paint job LOL.

    I'm terrible at picking paint colors, but once they're up, I tend to live with my mistakes. We re-did a house in Minnesota and I thought I'd picked the perfect tan for my living room dining room and halls. It looked a little pinkish on that first wall, but I kept going. I hated that pink for the two years we lived there. Then I moved on to the family room. That perfect tan was too yellow but I really loved it by the time we moved. By then, I decided maybe the trick was to find the perfect tan in a piece of fabric and then match the paint. The basement walls turned out too green. By process of elimination, the 4th try and the guest room ended up being the perfect tan!

    Small grandson's hat is sure cute -- did his mummy make it?

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