You never realize how much you can’t stand a paint color in a room in your home until you’ve noticed it every day for five months while in a quarantine.
We need a change! The upstairs bath that has always been a stark white, the hall bathroom that we painted what should have been a pinkish purple but turned out to look like a rancid Pepto-Bismol pink, and the other bathroom that was wallpapered in seafoam green paper now peeling off the walls–because that’s what wallpaper in a repeatedly steamy bathroom will do–are all plucking my last nerve. And during a pandemic—when you feel like your last nerve has already been plucked 4,652 times—that’s not an easy thing to do.
Or perhaps I should just stay out of the bathrooms. Well, that’s not an option.
My husband and I have decided that we are going to repaint.
Yeah, we really know how to party.
I enjoy painting, but I have to admit that I didn’t always. Back in 6th grade, my mom decided that we should update my bedroom. A company had just come out with a paint that you could use over wallpaper.
So they said.
After looking through many colors, I chose baby blue. This was going to be awesome!
My friend, Sandy, and her mom and mine got together to paint. We had a blast. We did a great job. And the tiny blue poodles that I had chosen on the wallpaper we got when I was in kindergarten were gone forever.
But the paint wasn’t.
At that time, a lot of paints were still oil-based. They weren’t easy to wash out like latex ones are. Let me pause for a minute while you go to the bottom of this column and look at my logo.
Go on. I’ll wait.
Are you back yet? Good. See all that hair I have? Well, I’ve always had this much hair. When I was in 6th grade, I had this much hair, but it just hadn’t gotten curly yet.
That would come along with a hormone rush in 7th grade. But I digress…
Despite having worn a bandana on my head, I still got paint in my hair. My mom did everything she could including helping me wash it about a million times (yes, a MILLION. I never exaggerate when telling stories)—and we thought we had gotten it all out. Until I went back to school on Monday.
A boy named George was standing up near my desk, as I was sitting there doing work. He happened to look down at my head.
“She’s got paint in her hair! She’s got paint in her hair!” he screamed.
Did I mention that 6th grade boys are mean and obnoxious? Well, a lot of them are.
Unless you’re one who is reading this. In that case, you’re a precocious little future genius, and I love you.
Again, I digress…
You would have thought that George had just discovered the Holy Grail.
Yes, the Holy Grail. This was Catholic school, after all.
Classmates rushed over to look at the couple of tiny dots of baby blue paint showing up in my dark brown hair.
That night, when I went home, I told my mom that we had to get the paint out no matter what. I didn’t care if she had to cut it out.
Paint and I haven’t always gotten along.
When I paint now, as an adult, I tend to, um, freak out a bit.
Okay, a lot.
My husband would probably say all the time.
Dang husband.
Why? Not because I’ll get it in my hair (it’s so curly now that you wouldn’t see it anyway. Heck, I could probably hide an entire can of paint in my hair). The paint nowadays washes out pretty easily.
I’ve found another reason to freak out—the color.
No matter what color we choose, I always stress when we’re first painting.
Here’s how it goes:
Me: ACK!!!!! This color looks awful!!! Oh my gosh! What have we done?! We’ve ruined the (fill in the name of any room in our home or any part of it outside)!
Husband: It’s just paint. We can always repaint it. And, remember, the color always looks darker after it dries.
Me: What? I can’t even imagine going through the process of doing all this again! ACK! The color is so wrong! What was I thinking when I picked this out?!
Husband: Everything is fine.
Can you guess which one of us is the Type A personality and which is Type B? What ends up happening is that the paint dries, gets darker, and looks fantastic. Not once in our 25-year marriage have we had to repaint a room because of the color.
Um, until the hall bathroom disaster. And, yes, we got married when we were 10 years old.
Stop laughing.
I’ve gotta go. Paint colors are calling. Decisions must be made.
And freak-outs must commence.
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not freaking out about paint colors, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore.