The Pink House

It has been five years since we moved into this house and we are finally painting our living room. Our motivation? We want to sell it and move closer to the area that we are constantly driving toward. Oh, and we could use another bedroom for this little one on the way.

I have been asking, hinting, begging, nagging-whatever you want to call it-about painting the living room since we moved in. All of the other rooms were painted within that first year. The catch to the living room is that it is quite a task. We have a loft so our living room ceiling goes very high. The idea of painting such walls was not a very exciting idea, hence we kept putting it off.

Thanks to the "buy paint on the Fourth of July and get a rebate" advice from our neighbor, I let Nick go and pick out the color. Yes, I am that brave. Normally, I am quite controlling about such things. However, being pregnant brings out my lazy side and really, if we did not love the color, oh well-we are trying to move anyway.

I did send some advice along with Nick before he went to buy the paint. I mentioned wanting a cream color-somewhere between light enough so that our house did not seem small, but dark enough to cover up the marks that our beloved children have left on the white, flat painted walls. That is specific enough, right?

Nick brought home a five gallon bucket of Painted Desert Sand. My first thought when seeing the color card was, "looks a bit pink," but I thought it looked brown next to our green dining room and did not want to hurt the feelings of my wonderful husband who had just unhappily spent a lot of money on my project.

We started painting this past week. We started upstairs in the loft, since it was less daunting than starting in the living room. The color looked great, we were working well together, and the kids were staying out of the way. However, as the paint began to dry, Nick suddenly said, "It looks pink." Not wanting to accept our own eyes, since we had been staring at the paint for so long, we asked the kids. Abby said, "Yea, it's pink!"

Crap. If you cannot trust the honesty of a five-year old, who can you trust?

Since we had already started using the paint, we could no longer return any of it to the store. To change the color would take buying a lot more paint to mix with it and there was no guarantee it would look better. We began to accept the fact that we were indeed painting our house pink.

This is where it was challenging to be Nick's wife. I had to listen to him critique himself over all of his bad decisions. He bought a five gallon bucket of paint instead of individual cans so that we could not return any of it. He did not try a sample of the paint first. Oh, and he bought pink paint.

I kept saying how it was not that bad. It looked nice next to our other colors. It would look better once it was all done. The curtains would help dull the color. I even had our neighbors come over and get their opinions to make him feel better. The wife backed me up by saying all of the encouraging ideas of how to make it look nice. The husband said, "It looks lavender."

Thanks for that, buddy.

My determined and cheap self just kept painting. The last few days I have continued to paint part of the stairway, the rest of the dining room and the lower part of the living room desert painted sand. I am not throwing away money and time to start with a new color. And you know what? It actually does not look that bad. The more we cover up the ugly white walls, the more we are comfortable with the color. As I slowly put things back on the walls and we move furniture in front of it, it is actually quite pleasant and cozy.

Or maybe I am in denial and we really are living in a pink house. Anyone want to buy a house in Loveland? It is full of character.