Sunday, October 15, 2017

Fifty Shades of Beige

I have decided I would rather be tortured than pick out paint colors.  Actually, those two things are the same. 

After 2 years in my new house, I have FINALLY gotten around to having the painter (whose mother lives down my street and who has painted most of the neighbors’ houses here) replace the builder grade Sherwin Williams “Hide the Flaws” (or whatever shade of off-white that is) with colors that better match my décor.  But who knew this task would be so daunting?

In my last house, I selected “Hillsborough Beige” for my master bedroom.  It seemed – from the tiny swatch – to match the furniture and the drapes, and, besides, I knew I would remember the name (since I was living in Hillsborough).  I hated it.  Too much mauve.  Did I get it repainted?  Nah, I lived with it.  Just like I lived with the yellow walls of the dining room and living room in that house, rooms I rarely entered.  I used to keep a laundry rack in the dining room because NO ONE ever went in there and you couldn’t see the room from the kitchen.  I guess I knew I wouldn’t be living in that house forever, because I was content (actually, just too plain lazy) to not put much work into the place beyond repairs and upkeep.  The pool alone “drained” my time and resources there. 

But this house is different.  I have never believed in painting BEFORE you move into a house.  As I predicted, I have changed the furniture, the rug and my mind (about a million times) since I moved in so my colors have to be selected accordingly.  But how?  I know I want a shade of beige, but which one?  One beige is too green, another too mauve.  Is this one too grayish, and is that one too gold?  That Benjamin Moore color deck offers way too many choices!

So I have done the thing that I see on all those HGTV shows I watch.  I am now the owner of 10 pints of paint, seven of which are varying shades of beige, and all represented by painted squares positioned all over the house.  Does Yosemite Sand (cute and memorable name) look right with the bedroom drapes?  Does Boardwalk match the new, coppery-brownish vessel sink?  Will Putnam Ivory have enough contrast with the stone going up around my fireplace, stretching 18 feet high?  Is it a good combination with Decatur Bluff if one is on the bottom under a chair rail and one on top?

Does Everlasting look too dull?  Does Sierra Hills look too bold?  You can ask yourself all of those questions by touring my house, where each painted sample has a color coded sticky note so I will remember which color is which.  The very patient woman in the paint store (who, seeing my dilemma, offered her services as a color consultant; if I were her, I’d run for the hills, and I don’t mean the Sierra Hills) steered me away from some potential candidates that didn’t seem quite right (this without her actually having seen the house).  Instead, my personal color consultant, my neighbor Donna, is providing much-needed guidance.  Our only issue is that she sees colors I don’t see.  “Do you see the gold in your granite?” she asks.  Gold?  Where?  I think. 

I knew I wanted a distinctly UN-beige shade on an accent wall, and I have been lusting after a deep blue, which is a popular color right now.  But most of the blues seemed too dark, or too gray, or too teal, until Donna and I walked into the local “Hand & Stone” massage place recently.  One whole wall was painted the perfect blue.  Of course, no one at the desk had a clue about the blue – why would they? – but we both agreed THIS WAS THE COLOR!  So after our massages, we ran to the local paint store, picked up a bunch of those paint chip strips, and headed back to Hand & Stone, where we told the folks at the desk not to mind us as we diligently matched them up to the wall – a large, living sample of the perfect blue (Benjamin Moore Van Deusen). Just to be on the safe side, I bought a pint of that, too, and up it went on the proposed accent wall, to full approval of Donna and me.  However, the second accent wall – in the family room – did not fare as well, since the room is darker and the blue looked, well, dark.  So there I am back to pondering the perfect beige, one that won’t make my huge sectional sofa (the one with not one, not two, but three power recliners) disappear. 

So back I went to the paint store, where the folks dutifully concocted the perfect small batch of my requested colors and put them on that milkshake machine to shake them to death.  Not that shaking helped me, since it took me a few days to even open the samples of Van Deusen Blue and Sierra Hills beige.

As a side note, who dreams up these names?  I mean, that’s an actual job, right?  Someone had to apply to be the “namer” of the paint colors.  Can you imagine letting your family know this is what you do for a living?  I mean, it’s an honorable profession, being a color expert who can marry a shade to a suitable name, but you have to admit, it seems like a profession to which few people would aspire – but what do I know?

I invaded my basement collection of leftover painting equipment, consisting of a bunch of small rollers, foam rubber brushes and plenty of take-out containers to serve as paint trays, my old shower curtain as the drop cloth of choice, stirrers and the cardboard box tops I always keep on hand for just such occasions.  I probably have as much stuff as the painters have, but I don’t move furniture and no amount of potential savings would prompt me to get up on a ladder and paint walls that run 18 feet high.  My painting these days is confined to a plethora of squares all over the house.

Given the expense of this undertaking and the amount of time and effort it will take, I really want to get it right.  But I feel myself getting bogged down in beige, which, knowing me, means I will settle.  I’ll lose my nerve and pick something that works but that I might not love.  Does it really matter?  After a while, no one notices it anyway.

All of this reminds me of the classic Cary Grant movie, “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” where the lady of the house is pretty sure she know what she wants, as she conveys her color preferences to the painter:

“Muriel Blandings:  “I want it to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin’s egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don’t let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green. Now, the dining room. I’d like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine-y. I tell you, Mr. PeDelford, if you’ll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can’t go wrong! Now, this is the paper we’re going to use in the hall. It’s flowered, but I don’t want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There’s some little dots in the background, and it’s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now for the powder room – in here – I want you to match this thread, and don’t lose it. It’s the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it! As you can see, it’s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan.”

Mr. PeDelford: “You got that Charlie?”


Charlie the Painter: “Red, green, blue, yellow, white.”


So, in the end, much of my house will be beige.  Just do me a favor and tell me you love it.

Footnote – The painting as well as the installation of travertine stone around my fireplace (stretching 18 feet high) – is now done.  Nearly done, since I am still waiting for the perfect mantle and for the hearth stone to be laid down.  If I had hand grips, that could be a rock-climbing wall! 

The painters I used were phenomenal, and they reminded me why it is better to hire pros than to DIY.  I used to sponge paint (which is now so passé), but that was a goof-proof technique.  You pick some colors and sponge paint on the wall.  These guys painted without taping off nearly anywhere.  They did the baseboard trim without a drop cloth.  I, on the other hand, dripped paint on the trim with my very first sample! 

I made a few last-minute substitutions on colors.  I fell in love with “Simple Pleasures,” a color I selected for an accent wall in the office and made the painters, who had already done one coat of “Oakwood Manor” on the other three walls, paint the whole room and one more wall in the Simple Pleasure shade of beige.  I now have a typed chart (thank you, neighbor Donna) listing each room, the name of the color and its Benjamin Moore color code for future reference.

I didn’t quite meet the 50 shades that title this month’s entry, but I haven’t had the upstairs of the house painted this time around.  So I may get there yet!