Painting

I've wanted to paint the inside of our house for a while.  The current paint on the walls is a flat finish, and that stuff does not wash.  I can scrub the paint off the walls before the sticky fingerprints and other messes come off.  Talk about frustrating.  I picked up some of those paint sample cards, and I left them tucked under pictures and left on the wall for a couple of weeks to decide what colors we liked best.  Modest Silver was the winner, and I went to Lowes and bought two gallons.

It was not grey, like I thought it would be.  

It was purple.

Well, it was purple for about 75% of the day.  In the early morning light, it was a lovely shade of light gray like I thought it should be.  But by afternoon, and especially in the evening when we turned on the lights, it was totally purple.  We left it on the walls all weekend, hoping it would fade or cure better, but no luck.

When we compared the walls and the paint in the can to to sample card, the paint was more purple than it should have been.  I was pretty mad.  All that work.....

Monday, we went back to Lowes.  Lowes was gracious, after awhile, and refunded us our money.  We looked at all of their greys, and with this new undertone revelation of ours, we decided they didn't have a single grey without a major undertone.  So, we went back to the beige-y standby, this one called Vanilla Steam.  It's much better.  We also grabbed some paint for the front door, and some white for baseboard touch ups.

So, our walls are well-coated in semi-gloss paint.  The front room and kitchen have been painted (and it washes!!!!), and I am working up the courage to do the family room and the kids hallway.  In the meantime, I painted the front door:

This is what it looked like, with me on my knees in some old and ugly sweats, when our neighbor Dan dropped by to borrow some eggs.