Yesterday afternoon as the painters were leaving for the day, Eleanor and I stepped into the plastic-shrouded house and tip-toed past piles of ceiling (now in crumbles on the floor) to see what the first colors looked like.

It was horrifying. The hallway color we had chosen, with a name like “Sahara”, looked on the sample chip like a nice balance between adobe and terra-cotta. In reality, it was RAGING ORANGE CREAMSICLE color, almost fluorescent when the sun hit it.   We stared in disbelief and then did the usual things we do when the color seems terribly out of whack (because this has happened to us before on other renovations):

1. Think, “They must have put on the wrong color.”
2. Pull out the paint chip and compare to the wall.
3. Realize with a sinking sensation that the color is correct, and we are color-blind idiots who should probably stick to shades of off-white from now on.
4. Mentally calculate the cost of a new 5-gallon bucket of paint.
5. Call the painter and recount the disaster.
6. After some free counseling from the painter, drive to the paint store and quickly find a new color that is boring but very safe.

So this morning the painters restored the hallways to a benign taupe. (Sounds like a medical condition: We have a benign taupe, which is better than a malignant orange.)

And then they painted Emma’s room.

Now, I knew Emma’s color was going to be unsuitable for most adults. She picked it. I tried hard to convince her not to go with a blue-green and managed to get the color lightened a shade, but it was still very blue. It appears to be precisely what it is: a kid’s room. Did I say “very blue”? Very very blue. The camera imploded when I tried to take a picture of it.

After that things went better. We love the kitchen color, called “Olive Oil” (sort of a light green), but of course this, our favorite color in the house, will be mostly covered up when the cabinets and appliances are installed. The living room and our bedroom are not bad either, in a mellow shade called “Almost Peach”, and the ceilings are a light cream color. It all works. Even Emma’s BLUE actually matches a lot of the slate floor.

Covering up the mistake

I am greatly relieved to have this phase over. The painters will return next month once we are done installing things, to do some touch-up, but that’s nothing. At this point we have no other major disasters scheduled inside the house, so we can start to unload things from the Airstream and open a few boxes from the storage room. Although the house won’t have a kitchen for another month (and no bathroom cabinetry), we’ve got a few rooms that are usable.

So we are going to take Sunday off from house stuff and try to go have some fun in the local area. A day to play will clear our heads for the next phase of planning, which is “details”. We’ll need to pick out drawer pulls and cabinet knobs, rugs, a couple basic pieces of furniture, faucets, one or two more light fixtures, closet systems, window shades, etc.   Hmmm… sounds like a lot of work.   We may hold all that for after we return from the next Airstream trip, which starts on Wednesday.