Thursday, December 4, 2008

Choosing Colors

It was born in 1971. It's now 37 years old.

I'm talking about our house.

We've lived here about seven of those years, and haven't really done too much to it. Sure, I painted the outdoor trim, repainted the kitchen and cut archways into the kitchen walls, but any major improvement has been put off. We did the usual thing and bought absolutely as much house as we could at that time. Fortunately, our salaries have increased over the years to a point where we're not eeking out our last week of groceries until the next payday.

But the time has come (as walruses say...).

Today we had a contractor/plumber in to put in a manmade marble surround in the kids's bathroom and to change the tub into a shower, so they can quit using ours. Their tub has been unusable for a couple of years now. But after tomorrow, it will be up and running (and better than ours!).

Then we chose some wooden interior fiberglass Marvin windows to put all around the house. Unfortunately with the economic downturn, our Home Equity Loan came back at about half of what we expected, so we can only do part of the house. I guess that means less to pay off in the future, right?

Through all this myriad of decisions, my wife and I have been on the same page. Window styles, tub surround colors and hardware, deck supplies, etc. But when we were in Lowe's the other day to find paint colors for our bedroom and for the living/dining area, we were polar opposites. She wanted dark red for the bedroom, and I was ready to go with a pale yellow (her fave color). For the living room, I wanted a rich khaki color, but she claimed that it was too dark, and so she picked an off-white. ACK! Fortunately, Lowe's sells those little tester cans, so we bought several (it'll be beautiful...). I'll let you know what happens.

Until next time,
Pastel Guy
www.matthewweld.com
www.studio206.etsy.com

3 comments:

Morgan the Muse said...

Sounds like some much-needed improvements!

magicmyst said...

Hi Matt, Ah renovating. The make or break of all relationships. My husband and I can never agree on anything and since he wont let me paint as he says I am too messy, he seems to mainly get his own way. I work a lot of weekends and when I was at work one day he painted our bedroom . It has a brown feature wall with coffee cream walls. It looks nice, but not what I would have picked. That's compromise for you!!!!

Adriana Meiss said...

Hi, I couldn't help smiling after reading your post. We recently moved back to our refinished bedroom. It took my do-it-yourself husband two years, but the waiting was worth it. And yes, I had to compromise with color choices, I wanted olive green, he wanted a much lighter color; we settled for a warm green. Good luck with your project!