Oh, dear reader, today was a sad sad day for interior painting. I went from being so excited to finally finish my project to having my heart sink in minutes. Let's rewind a couple of months to better understand what happened.
One sunny Saturday morning we decided to go to Lowe's to pick up some paint for Vanessa's room. Since I had decided to paint the walls white and add silver swirls, it was a fairly easy task. While we were there and already buying paint, we decided to pick out and purchase colors for the dining and living rooms also. We went with a deep red for the dining room and a soft brown for the living room. We knew we wouldn't get around to painting right away, but we decided to go ahead and buy all of the paint at once anyway. We picked our color samples, picked our paint type and brought them all up the the counter to have them prepared. He mixed it up, dabbed the tops of the cans for us to inspect and tried to send us on our way. Wait. The color on one of the brown cans didn't look right. Jeremy and I talked about it for a second and decided it wasn't right. Back to the counter we went. This time there was a younger guy who tried telling me yes, it was the correct color. I think he may have been color blind, not sure. The man who mixed the paint came to see and agreed, the color was not right. He then checked the machine and proceeded to explain to us that there was no black paint in the spot where there should have been, therefore no black went into our brown and that's why it looked tan instead of brown. Okay, fix it please. We're getting hungry. He asked if it would be okay to fix the same can we already have. Fine with us. He added the black, shook it in, dabbed the top and sent us on our way. This time we made it out to the car with the paint. In the sun you could really tell that the color was still not right. This time I stayed outside while Jeremy walked back in and dealt with the problem. The man was very apologetic and mixed an entirely new can. FINALLY, we were satisfied and able to leave Lowe's.
Now, let's move along to present day. We're home from vacation, all 4 kids are around the house again, we're in the heart of summer vacation and I decide it's time to pop the top off of the can of paint for the dining room....Tabetian Red, beautiful. I started on Monday and was able to get everything taped and the trim all finished (with help from Vanessa). I let it dry overnight and on Tuesday, I did one coat on the walls and let it dry overnight. Today I did the second coat. I called Vanessa down to admire it with me and was so happy with it. It looked lighter red than I imagined, but I could deal with it. Hmmm, the more I looked at it and watched it dry, the lighter it looked. Ok, don't freak, Jeremy will be home in a bit and he'll tell me it's the exact color we picked out. You know the color difference between a drop of blood and a pool of blood? That was the difference I was thinking it looked like. But it had been a couple of months since I saw the paint sample (the dab on the lid was picked off by one of the kids in the meantime) so maybe I wasn't remembering correctly. Jeremy walked in and gave me a verbal pat on the back by telling me what a good job I did, especially on the trim at the top. I didn't mention the color difference that I thought I was seeing. Then came the question.....................,"Isn't it a little light?" Shoot! He noticed too and that's not good because that means neither of us are completely satisfied with the color. The more we looked, the more we decided we just didn't pick the right color. We especially don't like the color of the room against the darker cherry wood of the dining room table and chairs. Well, what to do, what to do. We live with it. We know that eventually we'll paint it the color we want, but right now we'll just live with it.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted assurance that the fault was ours for picking that color. So I dug around and finally found the card color sample from Lowe's. AHA!!!!! Let me just type this in the nicest way possible, although it is NOT what I was thinking or what came out of my mouth. THEY GAVE US THE WRONG FREAKING COLOR!!!!!!!!! My heart sank. I think I had every negative feeling you can think of wash over me. It has to be repainted. It just has to. If we don't repaint it, I'm going to notice it every time I'm in there or even walk past it and be disgusted. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, I just did in that room was for nothing. We don't know why we didn't see it yesterday with only one coat on. It honestly looked darker then, for some reason. Maybe it was because the Spiced Vinegar already painted on the walls was showing through a little, I don't know. All I know is that we didn't realize that this color was all wrong until everything was dry and two coats were on. Damn.
We then talked about it and remembered all of the problems that we had with the brown all that time ago. I'm sure it's what also went wrong with the red. We were thinking that we got so involved with trying to get the brown right that we didn't even notice the red. Our fault, Lowe's fault, whatever. Jeremy is planning on bringing our empty can in and talking to them tomorrow. And you already know what I'll be doing. Taping : (
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