It's shocking to me how ugly my house is.
It shouldn't be, I mean, I work from home (I use the term "work" loosely here), which means I'm firmly ensconced in my fugly house most hours of the day. But somehow, I started accepting the fug as normal, and that's when the wheels came a-flyin' off the train.
For years, YEARS, I've worked in an office (read: my dining room) that was painted such an atrocious shade of green that it made me actually angry to look at the walls. I hear green is supposed to be soothing, but let me tell you, this sort of "cat pee on plasterboard look" is what they probably paint prisons with if they want the inmates to start brawling. It's that bad.
Or it was.
This weekend, because I have a party in which people may actually show up and see the fug in person, I realized it was time for a change.
And now.
My husband took the kids away for the weekend, I popped some No-Doze with my friend Ben, and we got to work. The green was replaced by a deep purple. The brass light fixture popular in the '60s was replaced by something sleek and modern. My desk was assembled -- which means that for the first time ever, I am working at an actual desk.
The living room, once painted three shades of taupe, is now a cheerful sky-blue. Soon, both rooms will have baseboards and crown-molding. I cannot tell you how much of a difference this makes and how hard I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner.
See, when I moved in, I threw myself into redoing the downstairs bathroom, which was a delightful three-patterned wallpaper monstrosity. I painted the nursery from a disgusting pink into a nice light yellow. I changed the boys room into a safari-themed, light tan room.
The other rooms, well, they all fell to the wayside. We all know that kids care a lot about the color of their bedrooms (mine didn't), right? Wrong.
Until Sunday night, when my three kids came piling out of the van and into the house, dying to see what this elusive "house painting" looked like. They oohed and aahed as they ran from room to room (they're connected, the rooms that were painted). Then, they decided that they, too, should have repainted rooms.
My eldest is battling my middle son over the color of their shared room -- we're unsure if purple or green will be the victor here. My youngest, though, who lives in the nice yellow nursery, carefully sat down next to me and said, "I want a pink room. For my birthday."
I nearly wept. Years before that room HAD been painted pink and it looked hideous, even as someone who loves all things pink.
But you gotta give the kid points for style. No Barbie Dream Car for her -- nah, she wants a pretty room.
And you know what? I can live with it. Providing she doesn't choose precisely the SAME color it once was.
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Comments 11
The purple looks amazing! I have a green room left over from the previous owners that we still haven't gotten around to painting. I just keep the door shut cause it makes me mad to look at!
Oh girl, you should have seen the weird mash-up of colors our house was when we first laid eyes on it, and how badly done the paint jobs were! Before we even moved in, the ENTIRE interior of the house got a paint job. Let's see, our living room was dark avocado green, the kitchen was white but had this hideous cow wallpaper border oddly placed, the family room (which shares a wall with the kitchen) was painted dark gray like a depressing cave, the 2nd bedroom had a badly done lavender sponge-painting job, the bathroom was burn-your-eyeballs-neon lavender, and the master bedroom was dark purple and had paint smeared on the ceiling, baseboards, you name it.
When we moved into our house, the previous people had painted the bathroom the most god-awful shade of brown imaginable. We painted it a nice, deep, turquiosy blue...within, like, a week. My overactive imagination needed the brown bathroom walls to go.
I was so happy to move into my apartment last year because white walls drive me nuts! It's a little place, but I still had a lot of fun running through the Disney Colors section of Home Depot to look for colors (the colors are actually really very nice with very easy to remember names!). The dining nook became a shade of magenta, the living room a light meadow green, the bedroom a slightly darker green (couldn't resist "Christopher Robin's Swing") with the magenta accents.
my daughter wants bright pink ... I like that purple look
I really like the purple, I wouldnt have thought about that color :] we are house hunting and looking at forclosed homes and some of the colors people put in their houses, holyhell! I'm more of a neutral fan, cafe colors and greys, but I might have to think about using a shade like that purple :]
I painted our master bath (which is such a tiny room, it shouldn't have the right to be call "master" anything) a smokey grape color (I think that might have been the actual name), and my husband was less than pleased. I'm so jealous you got away with painting a large room a shade of purple!