Extreme Makeover.. My home Edition.

Vacation stated for the wife this week, and of course like all good suburbanites, rather then actually taking trip or time to relax, a vacation has become a time to catch up on all the things that work has kept you away from, and a time to do major projects. Well in the wife’s case, our major project is to repaint some of the rooms in our house. Now our house really probably doesn’t need repainting, what with the wonderful artsy fartsy country chic and floral patterned borders everywhere, but you know when you buy your house, you want to start making it your own. So the wife and I are once again off to our most favorite of romantic evenings, spending time at the local home improvement superextravaganzamart, looking at various colors, and trying to picture exactly how big our room is.

Now this is where the real fun begins, as there are only approximately 1 gazillion bajillion-mazijillion colors out there, and of course none of them are the color that you are looking for. To make matters worse, all the colors that are close to what you are looking for are not what your significant other is looking for. Obviously, we both went into the store with some semblance of an idea as to what the color we were wanting was, but as you start looking at colors, you start realizing that your sense of colors are no where near calibrated the same. It seemed every color that she liked was a bit to orange, and every color I liked, she felt was to yellow. We had planned on painting the room a kind of harvest gold, similar to the glaze used on some of the plates we got for our wedding, but everything that we looked at was close, but not really what we wanted.

Finally the wife and I decided to just browse around some of the different wall treatments, and maybe gather some inspiration. Now this is totally a guy sort of thing to do, but thankfully the wife is a patient woman and humors my attempts of find inspiration or guidance by wandering down the paint aisles looking at the different products offered. I am sure the wife gets very frustrated with me sometimes, especially my failure to listen to her sage advice (that or just fold up like a cheap liquor store paper bag in a rain storm and agree with her,) but sometimes a guy just has to go and figure things out for himself, especially someone as bullheaded as me. So I go wandering around the store looking at all these different wall treatments and paint techniques, and finally point at the superextravaganzamart’s Venetian plaster technique.

“Honey, lets do this on the kitchen walls, the exquisite shadings, color depths and textures would just create a wonderful atmosphere that is inviting, warm, deeply inspiring and very appealing to the eye.” (Actually I probably said nothing quite this eloquent, rather I probably stood there pointing and grunting, but hey this is my story and I can tell it how I see fit!)

The wife patiently looked at my object of my excitement, gave a little sigh of exasperation and managed to mostly camouflage the look she gives me when I do something entirely stupid, impractical or otherwise testosterone fueled. She picks up the book and skims thru it, and hands it back to me and replies “Yes honey, this looks ideal! Surely the layering of 4 coats of plaster and coloring will be easy, especially the high areas above the cabinets. I am so glad you suggested this.”

Hmmm… 4 layers? Coloring? High areas above the cabinets? Oh… um yeah, maybe that color of paint isn’t to bold after all.

Note: This will be a continuing saga over the next few days and weeks. The wife and I will be working on redoing some rooms in the house and some other fun and exciting projects. I am fully documenting this process, and will be providing many of what I am sure will be humor filled episodes for all my readers. Pictures will be forthcoming!