CBMused

With the boxes unpacked and the furniture in place it was time to paint. In addition to my compulsive need to clean and scrub my new home with the same vigour as the old, I also had a need for colour. The crisp clean white walls that accompanied the “new” grew tiresome after only a few short nights.

At the hardware store I narrowed my choices for a feature colour to a soft sea-foam green and a striking crimson red. I have always been a person of two different minds, so why should this experience prove any different? When I asked another customer for an opinion (an older gentleman who looked as if he might always be building or fixing or painting something) between my two selected shades, I received more than a simple one word answer.

He encouraged me to choose the lighter sea-foam colour. In addition to talking about how it would compliment my hair he explained that it would go up neatly, without any incident. On the other hand, he gently informed me with the wisdom of someone who had painted metres upon metres of surface that the crimson would prove problematic. The first coat that I would apply would not look anything like the red square in my hand. The second and third coats would look even worse. It would not be until the fourth and fifth applications that my wall would start to resemble the vision in my head. With perseverance, and not a small amount of sweat, the sixth coat would show me what I had hoped for; in other words not a job for the faint-hearted.

When he had finished his lesson on painting he strongly recommended the softer safer colour, as if the other had vampiric qualities. I thanked him for his advice, but I couldn’t resist asking: So if you went to visit a friend in a new home, which of these colours would make a greater impression? His answer was not surprising.

Now I have some brushes to clean and a few more coats of paint to apply. And incidentally, the flecks of crimson look pretty good in my hair.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Aces, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.