Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Gray and I are in a fight

Who knew gray was such a touchy, tempramental color? Gray is the Robert Downey Jr. of colors. When it is right, it is smooth, suave, slightly edgy and possibly possessed of super-human, crime-fighting qualities. But when it is bad, it is oh-so-very bad.

Also complicating the issue; you have to choose from 13 million paint chips with names like Rain Soaked Pebble, or Bullet Hole or Cape Cod Ghostly Fantasy or Gum From Underside Of Denny's Table. None of these names are particularly helpful in choosing a color. Neither, strictly speaking, are the actual paint chips because what looks like the perfect, trendy, European Children's Bedroom color when taped to the doorframe, looks like Really Old Lady Hair when slathered on the wall.

Such was the case in my project room (the room that Violet and Dash share). I painted sample swatches of Goose Grey on two walls. I hated it. I let it dry. Still hated it. Painted another coat. Loathed it. Took a drive to find a change of perspective. Hate hate hate. Then the husband came home.

"Why did you paint their room purple?"

"It's not purple. It's Goose Grey."

"It's totally purple."

"It's grey. Maybe it's the light reflecting from the bedspread."

"Dash is going to hate it."

And he was right. He was also willing to go back to the store and have the paint re-tinted a not-purple color, which was super nice AND helpful.

So the project moves on. And because I never think to take a 'before' picture, you get the standard 'somewhere around the middle' picture. My camera-phone has totally betrayed me because it's not capturing the purpleness of the two paint swatches the same way cameras never captured the Salmon Mealoaf Grunge color of our old carpet. Oh, and the reason this room is such a disaster is the dresser is in the garage. Also being painted. Not grey.

As a side note, I should totally be in charge of naming paint colors.

3 comments:

fauxy said...

btw the bottom half of ruby's room is gray and i swore when painting that it looked purple. it looks gray now that it's all finished - will need your help with this gray issue very soon!

Charlo said...

I feel for you. we painted the top half of our master grey. A beautiful silky elegant grey—"silver sateen"... and it looked blue. Paint guy said someone else had had that problem with that very neutral colors. he suspected it was the filtering effect of UV windows. I, have no idea though. It looked horrible with our sandy carpets that look red in certain light.

We ended up buying 5 or so sample paints before we settled on graceful grey. You might think it is a a little brown for a grey, but you'd be wrong. On the walls, it's grey.

If you happen to want silver sateen though, I've got a bucket of it.

Missy said...

Agreed. You should be naming colors. When I'm in charge, that's your job.
The End.
Love, Missy