Repaint, repaint, and glow no more

The color of our walls has long been a bone of contention in our household. My husband, who bears the brunt of priming, painting, and maintaining said walls, likes to keep things white. Since this makes his job a whole lot easier it is hard to argue with him. Hard, but not impossible.

Over time, I have been slowly convincing him to add some hues to the some of the smaller rooms. The plan was to ease him in to a colorful world, hoping that he'd like it so much we could expand said world. A critical component in the plan: light colors. I had to keep them as pale as possible to soften the transition. The kid's bathroom is a very pale blue, and our kitchen is such a light green it's almost white.

Last week we finally reached a point where he asked me what color I wanted to do the dining room in (a sage green), and he didn't argue when I described what I wanted. Yay! Growth.

Unfortunately, I permitted the woman at Home Depot to rush me. I didn't ask the questions I wanted to, and I didn't take my time with my color choice. I chose "Desert Cactus," which in the store looked fine. We came home, and while I got the kids to bed my poor, long-suffering man got to work with the paint. He got a whole wall finished before I got back, and the effect of the paint on that wall was not good. It was not good at all.

Given our paint history, I decided to keep my mouth shut and hope that as it dried it would get better. He did another wall. The next morning, I studied the effect, said nothing, and headed off to get breakfast. A few minutes later he wandered in and asked me what I thought.

I started to back pedal a bit, trying to come up with a soft answer, but it didn't work. "Oh, well, you know.... I HATE it!" I guess he thought he heard me wrong, and it's really unlike me to be that blunt when I know he's worked so hard on something, so he just said, "What?"

"Maybe if we...no. I hate it. I hate it! I really, really hate it!!"

Seriously, I don't think I've ever felt so strongly about anything that trivial in my life. The walls looked like mint chocolate chip ice cream, but lacking in chocolate chips or any semblance of taste. Truly, they were awful.

Thank goodness Jay just told me we could go get a different shade, only commenting once at the paint counter that I'd better make sure I had the right color this time. We've re-done the glowing green walls with a lovely shade of "Lilly Pad," and my dining room no longer looks like a game show set.

But it looks like this unfortunate turn of events has delayed my living room makeover for some time to come...I was going to go for a red!