So I went and got a wee little sampler of the red I wanted, which required two different Lowes, and a lot of time browsing the specialty publications. As usual, they have not yet put out “Do-It-Yourself Home Decor For Artists Who Fear Power Tools But Not Color And Are Gamely Trying To Turn Suburban Tract Housing Into Something Less Soul-Destroying On A Fractional Budget Quarterly.” Where’s my specialty publication? I’m special. (At this point in any given tirade, friends and family generally being coughing and muttering “You’re special, all right…” Feel free to join in.)
Anyway, once they secured the correct base for my color, I took the red home and put it on the wall in a broad swath. Then I dug up the green Kevin had originally planned to paint the living room, and put THAT on in a broad swath.
Then I stood and stared at them for awhile. There was something about the green I couldn’t quite place…it was too pale, and not as intense as the swatch had looked, but there was something else…something familiar I couldn’t quite put my finger on…Easter grass? Sea foam?
Kevin came home around that point, studied the green, and said “Hmm. That’d be a great color for a bathroom or something. Can the red be shinier?”
“Yeah, we’ll do it in semi-gloss. What with the dogs and all.” I continued staring at the green. Did I have a shirt in that color? Surely not. It would make me look bright pink and do things to the black-and-red hair not healthy to contemplate. I wanted the red for the living room. Definitely the red. But the green, what WAS that green? I knew that green…
I went up to my studio, glanced across it at the large cardboard Danny Dragonbreath standup, and slapped my forehead, because somehow, Kevin had picked the exact swatch that corresponded to Dragonbreath light green.
I could maybe handle the guest bathroom in that, but no WAY was I dealing with it in the living room.
Red it is. I went and got two gallons of Porcelain Red. It’ll take at least three coats because red suuuuucks, but I shall have that room redecorated or die in the attempt! (Which no one will notice for several hours, because of the red.)
Yay for painting the living room! But also dammit. Because my husband is going to see this and start bothering me again about painting the kitchen red, because hey, Ursula’s doing it, red must be totally okay for rooms, and I am… really dubious that a small kitchen with dark cabinets and a black tile floor surrounded by ocean-blue living rooms is a good thing to paint red. The catalogs he keeps showing me to prove that People Do This are clearly designed to sell me new cabinetry, which only increases my suspicion.
Oh, well. It’s only paint. There’s always another layer.
Invest in the expensive paint, if you’re doing red. Experience has taught me that if you buy the cheap stuff, you will have to put NINE coats on the wall, and it will STILL look like crap!
I have been told (no experience mind you) that if you put down a grey base coat it will make the reds much easier/faster to apply. Anyhow, good luck! I want to have a red room one day 🙂