3177 Matching Expectations

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do.

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Saturday and Sunday I taped up the master bedroom, and painted all around the edges. Yesterday I finished the edge painting and started on the walls with the roller. Got about a third of the room done.

I'm staring to have second thoughts about the color I chose.

The furniture that'll eventually go in that room is all Chinese and Tibetan, mostly a very dark red with a lot of gold, black, and some other colors. An obvious choice for the walls would have been a pale green, or blue, or golden yellow. However, my skin has yellow tones and those colors are simply not flattering to me. I could go with a neutral beige or light gray, but that was just blah, and I didn't want blah in that room.

I picked a paint chip that was close to the red of the furniture, and I carried it around with me, holding it next to possibilities, and believe it or not a color I kept going back to over and over, that worked very nicely and made me happy, was called "essence of lilac", a pale lilac with grayish overtones.

Not an obvious choice with dark red, but it worked.

Well, I'm not so sure any more. What is coming out of the can is more of a violent violet. I don't think it's the light in the room. I have several large chips of the chosen color, and I stuck them on the wall on top of the paint, and it's not the same color at all. The grayish component is missing. It'll still work with the Chinese red, but not with the gold and other colors in the furniture.

I'm hoping that after it "cures", it'll change to the grayish lilac. The peachy mauve paint in the living room did change over the first week, so maybe. Otherwise, I'll have to do it all over again.

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Daughter and I went on Sunday to a state park for a short walk. On the way back home, we passed a house around the corner with I swear a hundred Christmas doohickeys in the front yard. I said, "Oh my God!", and Daughter said, "Just wait. They're not finished yet." I'll post a photo when they are finished.

Apparently a lot of people around here decorate in a big way.

This is definitely a working class neighborhood. When I decided to buy this house, Daughter tried to redirect me to other neighborhoods nearby. Yeah, those neighborhoods have nicer houses on larger lots, with residents who store their cabin cruisers and speedboats in marinas for the winter, not in the front yard. (Lots of boats around here - we're close to water.) But I liked the idea of being across the street from the kids.

Even though I worked in a definitely white-collar job and have mostly lived in white-collar places, when you come right down to it, I'm from a blue-collar background. Neither of my parents went to college. Before my father was selected for officer candidate school and was commissioned in the Air Force based solely on his scores on IQ tests, he worked in the coal mines and machine shops. He was always very conscious of and sensitive about his lack of education. Before Mom had to quit work to accompany him on his postings, she worked a loom in the Scranton Lace Company. (I have her practice tablecloth.)

So, many of my deepest attitudes, tastes, and preferences are blue-collar. Daughter may not believe it, but although this is not the kind of area where I might have imagined I'd end up, I'll probably be just fine here. Maybe even happier than in a snootier place where one has to meet certain expectations.
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