Project Fail: Paint

Steven and I have a good marriage. We agree on parenting issues, we rarely argue about money, and we even generally like spending time with each other. Our friends tend to tell us we're perfect for each other (or conversely, we deserve each other). But there's a dark side to our marriage. We cannot agree on home décor.

See, we didn't find out about this in the early, heady days of living together and marriage because we lived in apartments. Our furniture was mostly hand-me downs and everything was painted semi-matte ecru. We dreamed of the day we would have a place we could paint, how we would some day buy our own, new furniture, we trolled through IKEA, looking at all the choices. How could things go wrong? We even have the same favourite colour.

R.I.P. 70s Porno Chair

As it turned out, picking out a couch wasn't too hard. After the historic floods this spring, our hand-me down furniture, including my beloved 70s Porno Chair®, a large, brown round velour monstrosity that could seat two swingers comfortably, were soaked irreparably. We developed mould and everything had to go. 

It only took one trip to IKEA to find a couch with both loved and the only question was if we really, truly could justify bright orange in our living room (we could not). We picked out a black couch and chairs. 

Then, we rebuilt the bathroom. 

Suddenly, we had a room we could paint! We were like giddy children, talking about our trips to Home Depot and how exciting it would be to finally be able to decorate a room the way we wanted to. Of course, some of that giddiness was probably brought on from having a bathroom with a functional sink and a real bathtub. 

As I sat in my shiny, new bathtub, I suggested we paint the walls robin's egg blue and my husband made The Face.

I thought I had found the perfect blue in my BFF Martha's line of paints. My husband said it was too green and, it seems, he does not like green bathrooms. We picked out an endless array of those little cards and taped them up all over our walls. It felt like we were making a crazy quilt, we had so many little squares. We bought little samples of paint and we bickered. This was too green, this was too dark, this was not bright enough. My idea of blue is not his.

We ended up finding a colour by accident. I had been send a free sample of Glidden paint, we swatched it on the wall, and we looked at each other and just knew. There was a happy ending.

Of course, in this round of Project Fail, we built the nursery for Hieronymus. With that, we realized that we would now have to pick another paint colour. Oh sure, we both agreed that we'd paint her walls lime green. This meant electric lime to Steven and a softer, sherbet lime to me. I like electric lime, don't get me wrong, but it's not exactly a bedroom colour, especially not one for a baby. 

There's an upside to this, too. We grabbed a couple samples right away and today, I painted swatches. There were really only two choices that we both agreed on. I'm pretty sure we even like the same colour for trim, too. What's left to agree on? Satin finish or semi-gloss... our modern Romeo and Juliet. 

Now, if only our daughter likes colours as much as we do. I don't know if I can have a child who wants to paint everything ecru.