A Room With Color

Since we lived in a mobile home for thirty-five years with wood paneling, when we moved into this house in Superior with its totally white painted walls, I thought I was in heaven. I loved the isolation it brought to my furnishings, colors would stand out, everything always looked 'clean'. Of course, the decorating magazines and books I've been picking up this year to help me 'finish' the decorating were touting color on the walls, banishing the white painted walls, that 'sterile' look.

I even had a discussion (argument) with a younger friend, Jean-Marie, this summer about my white painted walls. She not only espouses color on the walls, she even touts two color walls, the more the merrier, in her book. White walls, she stated, were passe and it was time for me to break out some paint. Not so!, I argued. I'd lived for thirty-five years with brown wood paneling and I was enjoying the sterile white look. But it was so Yesterday!, she exclaimed, get with it.

Well, Jean-Marie, you should see the house now, or even better in a few weeks, when we finish,for Bill and I have discovered Color. We ran up to Ace last Sunday and picked up four gallons of color. We put a new acrylic painting in the living room with a Southwestern theme and the wall was begging for a tan background. So we spent forty minutes painting a white wall in the living room a creamy tan color and it looked good. And it was Easy. Bill did the cutting in with a tapered brush and let me roll on big swatches of paint with a roller. It was water clean-up and we finished in under an hour. Yeah... Easy! And boy, did it look good! And now our other walls looked.... plain.

So the next day, we broke open a can of mint green and started on the opposing wall, the fireplace sits between these two walls. We thought it was a nice light mint green, but the color must have changed a bit when they mixed it, for it turned out to a medium turquoise. Suddenly, that wall now demanded all the attention in the living room. Astounding how the walls were competing for whose attention would be drawn to it! Immediately, Bill broke open a gallon of dark persimmon we'd bought for some work outside and applied it over the fireplace. It picked up the orangey-brown tones of a new Australian print we just hung. Zowie! Now the fireplace wall was screaming for notice!

Suddenly, our living room was a riot of color and we still had another wall to do which would connect with the dining room which flowed into the kitchen... Man, this was fun! But what colors now and where would it end?

Wednesday, we headed down to Mesa and a big Lowe's store. We spent an hour and a half in deliberations (Hey, folks! This stuff takes time!!!) and bought four more gallons of paint, a lemon yellow, lime green, a grape lilac and an iridescent teal green. Now we were cooking!

We came home and entered the sun room. The sun room has big windows looking out onto Apache Leap but the back wall is a solid white. Bill drew out four big ray over the doorway into the sunroom, running big blocks of diagonal color into that wall. The first ray is a brilliant sunny yellow. It just begs you to wake up and get going! The second ray was the lime green. Once on the wall, it almost screamed chartreuse, it was so greeny-yellow. What next? A beautiful tangerine that could hold its own against the other colors. The fourth ray? Well, it's basically under the table that sets there and I'm opting for my pretty grape lilac but Bill is favoring a chocolate brown, so that hasn't been painted yet.

But get this: yesterday, we moved outside. Before I came home, Bill painted the upper and lower driveways a light green. The retaining wall on one side, next to the house, he painted a pale yellow. We thought a lime green on the opposing retaining wall would be interesting. So that was my job. And it's bright all right, but maybe throws the deserty pastels for a loop. (Meaning: It may get repainted.) While I was on that, Bill painted the front step that dark persimmon color and the front walk the pretty lighter tangerine color. Today, he painted the area around the front step the bright lemon yellow. We are lookin' Good, I tellya!

So okay, Jean-Marie! I stand corrected! Color is the way to go. I don't know how far we're going with this, but right now, we're having a really good time with it. And like Bill says, if we don't like it... we can always re-paint!