Life is a Rainbow

From Janelle:

I love color.  When we purchased this house it was an opulence of monochromatic blahness.  The kitchen, bathrooms and stair railings were traditional dark stained oak, all tile was beige with insets of flowers in the master bath (gag), the carpet a mixed blend of cream and tans and bathroom linoleum surprise, surprise beige.

We knew that it would be some time before we were able to remodel so we painted and painted and painted.  The bland kitchen tile remained but the cabinets were coated in white, walls in aqua and the linoleum floor in industrial indigo tile.  I’ve read that blue is the least appealing color for a kitchen (think about it, the only blue foods are berries) but it radiated happiness.

We had painted our 1938 bungalow bedroom raspberry, leaving the rounded low ceiling white and carried that color palate to this house but the vaulted ceilings looked odd white against the deep color.  I instructed the painters to keep going inspiring the leadman to gape at me incredulously and then plaster more intense pigment onto the ceiling. The room inspired strong opinions from viewers; a few loved it, some hated it and most just didn’t get it.  That’s ok, we liked it and we loved our “sleeping tomb” as we called it, the heavy dark green velvet curtains shut out all sunlight and any shards of brightness that dared creep into the room were obliterated by raspberry denseness.

No matter how many lights blazed little could penetrate through the concentrated tint and five years later I was over it.  It had taken three or four coats to transform white walls into a passionate hue and it took the same to convert the darkness back to white, one wall colored the same turquoise as the scullery.

Our new kitchen will be gleaming, reflective white with a pop of orange in the bar.  The guest bathroom is swathed in a dizzying array of blue glass and the guest bedroom will feature funky Andy Warhol tile over a built in cabinet and at least one wall will be bathed in sunshiny orange that might have leapt from a Sunkist fruit. Some might think that that it is too much but it makes me happy and that’s what matters.

From Lewis:

Somehow all the color did work one way or the other but in the back of your mind you know it will change in the future.  Hopefully not from white to raspberry again but I’m sure there is some sort of insulation rating for ten layers of paint.

Goodbye Raspberry…..

Hello aqua and lime!

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