I laughed out loud at your title, Cali! I can relate to the paint miscalculation...unless you are an expert on lighting and paint colors etc etc, I find it very hard to pick paint color. I have messed paint color up a lot over the years too. Now, I just go with boring white! Good for you to try some color anyway! I will spare you a story about a green velvet couch I once took a chance on, and had to live with for many years--one bright side to paint, is at least you can change it a bit quicker! Love your comparison to writing and as always, you are taking it all in stride!
The Great Yellow Miscalculation - what a great name! I recognise it because I too have had one (with yellow!) some years ago in the dining room. We had to paint it three times, in different colours of yellow, before it looked and felt right. But plugging on until it was right was important. As is doing the novel writing. Not that I have ever done that, but I feel I am gently creeping up on it. I have just ordered Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Why I think I have enough time to even begin a novel when I have just taken on another p/t job, I do not know! But am busy laughing at myself, anyway. Along with my own Great Yellow Miscalculation!
The Natalie Goldberg book is fantastic. You don’t need oodles of time to get started on a novel. Ten or twenty minutes a day is really effective. Just have fun with it.
I should have mentioned the time I painted a bathroom pink. It was a big bathroom with a jacuzzi tub and big windows, plus the small part with the shower and toilet - which is to say it took a lot of time. It had white subway tile part way up so I didn't think it was that much wall. But. The pink, which I thought was going to be very pale, turned out quite bubble-gum pink looking in that room! Ah! Had to pick a new color and do it again.
Oh, I can feel this one Cali. And I did admittedly laugh a little bit. I have painted so many houses. I’ve made color mistakes. I’ve learned that bathrooms take a lot longer because there’s a lot of little spaces and a lot of stuff you gotta go around. They look small, but they’re not easy. Ceilings can definitely be difficult too, especially depending on the height and the fact that everything is up over your head. And yellow is notoriously tricky. Every color looks different in different light and yellow seems to be one that particularly can do that. In the previous house I owned, when I moved in every wall was painted gray. I didn’t really realize that when I was looking at it because they had designer furniture in there and all the furniture was white. But when I brought all my things in that gray drained the color out out of them, and when we hit the first winter, it had to go. So I painted yellow, but I did an accent wall in a pinkish red. And the ceilings were white. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I could really empathize with what you’re discussing here and I love the way that you connected it to writing. Good luck with your painting, eventually it will be what you hope for I know.
Thanks for your encouragement. Yes, I too realised that the bathroom is not as simple as I thought. It's a small room but lots of different skills are need for all the various surfaces and all the junctions where they meet. My mother has just been round and she suggested that I could do one wall in the living room as a different accented colour and that might break up the yellow too. I will succeed with it eventually!
I laughed out loud at your title, Cali! I can relate to the paint miscalculation...unless you are an expert on lighting and paint colors etc etc, I find it very hard to pick paint color. I have messed paint color up a lot over the years too. Now, I just go with boring white! Good for you to try some color anyway! I will spare you a story about a green velvet couch I once took a chance on, and had to live with for many years--one bright side to paint, is at least you can change it a bit quicker! Love your comparison to writing and as always, you are taking it all in stride!
Glad you liked it and it made you smile. I’m going to start repainting the hallway today.
Green velvet sounds interesting. I guess with a couch, you could always through a blanket or something over it.
The Great Yellow Miscalculation - what a great name! I recognise it because I too have had one (with yellow!) some years ago in the dining room. We had to paint it three times, in different colours of yellow, before it looked and felt right. But plugging on until it was right was important. As is doing the novel writing. Not that I have ever done that, but I feel I am gently creeping up on it. I have just ordered Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Why I think I have enough time to even begin a novel when I have just taken on another p/t job, I do not know! But am busy laughing at myself, anyway. Along with my own Great Yellow Miscalculation!
The Natalie Goldberg book is fantastic. You don’t need oodles of time to get started on a novel. Ten or twenty minutes a day is really effective. Just have fun with it.
Thank you so much for that encouragement! Very helpful
I should have mentioned the time I painted a bathroom pink. It was a big bathroom with a jacuzzi tub and big windows, plus the small part with the shower and toilet - which is to say it took a lot of time. It had white subway tile part way up so I didn't think it was that much wall. But. The pink, which I thought was going to be very pale, turned out quite bubble-gum pink looking in that room! Ah! Had to pick a new color and do it again.
Oh, I can feel this one Cali. And I did admittedly laugh a little bit. I have painted so many houses. I’ve made color mistakes. I’ve learned that bathrooms take a lot longer because there’s a lot of little spaces and a lot of stuff you gotta go around. They look small, but they’re not easy. Ceilings can definitely be difficult too, especially depending on the height and the fact that everything is up over your head. And yellow is notoriously tricky. Every color looks different in different light and yellow seems to be one that particularly can do that. In the previous house I owned, when I moved in every wall was painted gray. I didn’t really realize that when I was looking at it because they had designer furniture in there and all the furniture was white. But when I brought all my things in that gray drained the color out out of them, and when we hit the first winter, it had to go. So I painted yellow, but I did an accent wall in a pinkish red. And the ceilings were white. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I could really empathize with what you’re discussing here and I love the way that you connected it to writing. Good luck with your painting, eventually it will be what you hope for I know.
Thanks for your encouragement. Yes, I too realised that the bathroom is not as simple as I thought. It's a small room but lots of different skills are need for all the various surfaces and all the junctions where they meet. My mother has just been round and she suggested that I could do one wall in the living room as a different accented colour and that might break up the yellow too. I will succeed with it eventually!