And it came to pass that they made a green as green as grass.*
We should have had Brush and Hush around the other day. W. spent the better part of two weekends painting our closet sized downstairs bathroom. When we moved into the house, the kitchen was freshly painted in a really pleasant just-right green. But the previous owners had put nails in the wall in a few places, and we wanted nails in different places, and so for nearly three years there have been a couple of spackled but unpainted patches in the kitchen. Since he had the paint stuff out, and the sellers had had the good sense to leave their leftover paint, well marked, W. thought he'd touch up those few spots. Perfection!
Then he decided to touch up a couple of dings in the adjoining green breakfast nook.
Oops. The breakfast nook is a different, darker shade of green. Observant folks that we are, WE HAD NEVER NOTICED THAT THERE WERE TWO SHADES OF GREEN HAPPENING. The two colors meet at an outside corner, and the difference is hard to see - you really have to think about it because you assume that the difference is due to the variation in light conditions. Those spots in that picture? It's the lighter green paint on the darker green paint.
Luckily, the clever sellers had also left the Benjamin Moore paint strip in a pile of house information, so we know that the kitchen is "van alen green" and the breakfast nook is "sherwood green" and we were able to get a quart of the "sherwood green". But still.
*Someday, when I'm feeling up to it, I will write a paean to Margaret Wise Brown. I do so love her books, The Color Kittens being one of them.
9 comments:
You're lucky your home's previous owners chose nice paint colors. We're in the midst of repainting (and will be for a long while, I think), and we have one electric sky blue room and one that they patched badly but never painted at all. Our previous owners were nice enough to leave extra paint and paint color info, too, but I don't think we'll be reusing their colors. Quite an adventure. I love your greens, though. I may have to borrow them.
Oops. And you never know when a paint will dry darker, so I'll bet that took a lot of staring and waiting to be sure.
I like that green. We keep saying we're going to paint over out highly scuffed shades of beige, but we haven't yet.
Oh, do I love Margaret Wise Brown. I think Big Red Barn best of all. I can recite that one from start to finish.
Nice greens, both!
Oh, that's too funny. Smart sellers, though, I wouldn't have thought to leave the chip behind.
We decided to paint our kitchen two slightly different shades of green, the darker shade on the bottom. They looked so similar in the can that we just guessed. It turns out that the darker shade is on the top, but most people can't tell the difference, anyway.
I love the molding and hardwood floor.
When I moved into my place a year and a half ago, my bathroom was a really horrible pukey brown-green. I picked out what I thought was a terra-cotta peachy color. Brought it home and it was pepto-bismal pink. I even tried mixing it with some white. Still pink. Finally I gave up and just painted the bathroom with it. I mean I'm pretty girly- but not that girly. But at least it's better than puke brown and my complexion looks good against the new color!
I do like that green. Too bad it didn't match.
Sometimes even having the right color isn't enough. I had to touch up a spot in the downstairs bath where I accidentally took the paint off with rubbing alcohol (I had no idea that isopropyl alcohol will dissolve latex paint!). At first, I couldn't find the matching can; eventually I located it, but it was all dried up. so I went to the paint store and bought another quart of the same color paint. Sadly, the same color is not quite the same color--it's just a hint grayer. Luckily, once I put the wallhanging back up, it covered most of the spot and it's only noticeable if you inspect the area closely.
So lucky you are that it matched! We now have what seems like thousands of color swatches in our dining room in various shades of green. None match the vision my husband has for the room. I still don't know what it is.
it's a beautiful color, though. and how wise that they left the paint chip for you. oh how i wish previous owners had done that for us!
Wow, those are very organized previous owners!
We had to totally repaint everything. The previous owners had everything pink and stencilled with hearts and bows and things.
Post a Comment