The Right Color At Last

This is the "before" wall color that we have been dealing with in our living room for several years. I had wanted a warm orange but this shade was just not right. It screamed at me every time I entered the room. It was not quite the tame color you see in this photo. 

But the room had been really hard for me to paint five years ago and involved a lot of ladder work and tiny brushes taped to long handles to reach over the belly of the kiva fireplace. Time and arthritis have marched along since then and I wasn't sure I was up to all that climbing up and down. But that formerly lovely-sounding Tangerine color kept on shrieking at me, day after day. 

What you are seeing here:
A kiva (an adobe fireplace), surrounded by bancos (built in benches, also made from adobe),
with a little nicho (niche) for displaying santos (carvings of saints) or other artwork.

Then I watched The Durrells in Corfu on PBS Masterpiece Theater. I had to keep pausing the show to take photos of the screen. The colors of the water! The colors of the upstairs bedrooms! When I began to dream in teal I knew it was time to get out my old nemesis, the ladder.

This is the book [with a slightly different title] about the TV series.
 The cover shows the very colors that were enchanting me

It's the hottest time of the year here in the desert. I figured that I could put on an ankle brace and some scanty painting clothes (never to be seen by anyone else) and manage two or three hours early each morning before I tired out and/or it got too hot. And that is what I did. 

I am in love with the results. The velvety deep color seemingly changes from hour to hour as the light hits it differently. It's hard to explain the feeling of comfort I get from stepping into this room. It is cooling on a hot day and I feel like I'm floating in the Aegean Sea.

A little Oaxacan creature roots around in the nicho

Another Oaxacan carving stands in a newly-refurbished little cabinet.

I think this little bird is looking at the other side of the room, which is still that Tangerine color. Have patience, little bird. 

By the way, I am watching The Durrells in Corfu for a second time now because it makes me so happy. It is loosely based on Gerald Durrell's delightful Corfu Trilogy, which I read many years ago.  From the PBS website for the show:

"Keeley Hawes (Upstairs Downstairs) stars as an intrepid widow who decamps from dreary England to a sun-dappled Greek island with her four recalcitrant children, ages 11 to 21, on this adaptation of Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and its two sequels.

Alongside Hawes’ matriarch Louisa Durrell are eldest son, Larry (Josh O’Connor), a budding writer on his way to becoming the famous novelist Lawrence Durrell; son number two, Leslie (Callum Woodhouse), an impulsive firearms enthusiast; daughter Margo (Daisy Waterstone), sixteen and man-crazy; and eleven-year-old Gerry (Milo Parker), who only has eyes for wildlife and grew up to be a world-renowned naturalist."

Lovely Color

Take a look at these two photos, taken with my old non-digital camera, which captured colors in a wonderful way. The wall with the blue door is in Mesilla, Las Cruces' "old town," and the other picture is of my sister's apartment in Berkeley. These colors make me feel so happy, it's no wonder I decided it was time for the beige living room walls to go.









My intention was to paint them a beautiful canteloupe color, so here is the paint I got:


It's so hard to show true color on the computer, but the shade looked like orange sherbet (canteloupe sounds healthier). Here is what it looks like in the living room. I'll show you the "before" beige and the "after" colorwash.













Much cheerier, don't you think? If you could see the colorwash up close, you'd think that I used two or three colors of paint to obtain a layered effect. Actually, I thinned the paint down with water, about half and half, and sponged it on sparingly with a natural sponge, which had been cut to a comfortable size to handle with a sharp knife. The straight edge of the cut came in handy when painting around windows and molding and up where the wall meets the ceiling. Because the wall has some texture to it, the end result is a mottled effect that I really like. However, the walls turned out to be several tones of gold, instead of the intended canteloupe. It was amazing, I loaded canteloupe color onto the sponge and it turned gold on application because of the underlying beige layer.

The room is now a warm and lovely looking color, and it only took seven tablespoons of paint!

Cowboys of the Canteloupe Corral

Time to paint the living room. Enough with those beige walls. This is New Mexico, after all, where colors are intense and seen in combinations that you might never imagine. When we lived in Las Cruces I learned that pink and orange and purple together make a wonderful combination. My color courage grew, and when we moved back to New England I planted hot red-purple-pink-orange flower colors side by side out in the garden, then took my newfound bravery to our interior walls.

Our red New Hampshire living room brought friends scurrying to have a look. They liked it but said that they would never have the courage to do the same to their walls. But I noticed that they smiled a lot in that room.

Now, in our new Clovis house, we have a red-orange kitchen and dining room. I can't claim to have done it--I probably wouldn't have been brave enough--but I love the results. It's a great place to be in.

So, now it's time to paint the living room. It's such a neutral place, though it has lots of texture--brick, wood, faux leather, and copper touches. It's a little kitschy, I'm afraid, with a cowboy theme featuring pictures of me as a four-year old "cowgirl" living in San Francisco. There are big boots and my little boots from way back then. There are some fake cowhide items. It's comfy and a good place to kick back and put your boots up. But it's all surrounded by those beige walls.

Well, I'm ready to make the change, and I just got back from the paint store with a bucket of paint in a shade that looks like the fresh canteloupe down at the Clovis Farmer's Market. Cowboys, saddle up!