Laume's Studio

I'm still working on my painting problems. If you'll recall, I wanted to paint a big U-shaped, three room area green. I'd given color swatches a lot of time and attention and, thinking I'd finally made a decision, ran out last week and bought a quart of paint to try on the wall. Good thing I have experience and didn't run out and buy a couple of gallons, eh?

I've been pretty lucky with past paint selections. I've usually managed to select the right paint on the first or perhaps second try. I did go through three or four colors trying to pick paint for the outside of our house though, at which point I still didn't have it right but decided my last selection was good enough. I still sometimes remember that I wanted a slightly different look, but all in all I've been happy enough with it. That was a green paint too. Hmmmm.

But I'm not willing to settle for something "good enough" for my livingroom, dining room, and kitchen. I spend too much time in these rooms to settle for "good enough". It would probably drive me slowly insane always having to adjust the tint or saturation in my mind every time I looked at my walls.

So. I'm stuck staring at paint cards until my eye balls melt away. At least that's how it felt a few days ago.

That's when I got the clever idea to browse decorating magazines to get a "bigger picture" view of which paints appeal to me. I also went to my favorite home decor store and took a close up look at what colors appealed to me larger amounts. It's one thing to casually browse a decorating magazine, quite another to look through it keeping in mind a specific lesson to be learned. Not only did I get a better sense of exactly what greens I like best, I also learned a lot about the decorating styles I gravitate towards, which was helpful because I had realized several days into the paint selecting that I had two decorating styles that were, if not warring, at least competing to be my favorite child.

It doesn't look like I've been doing much the last few days, driving back to the same stores to gather more paint samples, wandering around the house making rooms look like we're decorating for a guerilla warfare movie, lazing on the couch leafing through dangerously high stacks of magazines. But au contraire! I've been doing a lot! Or rather, I've been learning a lot. And apparently there's no short cut through the hard work of designing.

The exciting news is, I've had one of those lovely light bulb moments and come up with a completely unexpected change of direction that I suspect will solve everything! Well, by everything I mean the lighting problems and dueling design problems in the areas I want to paint. It won't, unfortunately, stop world hunger or prevent war or anything. Sigh. I wish. But it will, I think, fingers crossed, create beauty in one tiny spot in the world.

I won't tell you what my great idea is yet. It's my little secret for another day or two. Although I want to chronicle my efforts here, so I'll have to spill the beans soon. Now I'm off to work on some sample efforts. Stay tuned....