dragonlady7

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so ok it’s the weekend and we were snowed in for a week and i’ve done a ton of unpacking but it’s all invisible yay

but dude was making low-key plans for the weekend and i was like NO WE MUST GO TO THE HARDWARE STORE AND GET PAINT SAMPLES

i had to like. drag him to look at the paint chips idk why it was so difficult.

So we haggled and hemmed and hawed and held chips up in various spots and eliminated almost everything I’d brought home. Nothing would do as the accent color. But the wall color… we narrowed it down to Behr’s Thai Teal, Celtic Queen, or Bella Vista. Celtic Queen was their pthalo-est green; Thai Teal and Bella Vista are almost the same except Thai Teal is dustier and Bella Vista clearer. Dude felt the cabinets having a dusty cast meant the wall should do, and I strongly felt the opposite. He yielded to my intensity of feeling on this.

But none of the colors I’d picked out were suitable as a trim color to pair with either of the teals or the green, so we’d have to go look. A lime green, perhaps, or a bright orange?

I also felt that painting the bay windowsill a strong color was the wrong choice, so we decided it should be a high-gloss white, but of course a shade of white that didn’t clash with the white countertop. Not having a sample of countertop, I instead brought a spare backsplash tile with me to the hardware store, so I could tell what color of white I needed (ugh).

Thus ensued Hell: Trying to pick which of the hundred colors of white would match the tile without being too obviously not-white (which would clash with the white-white plastic of the electrical outlets and the plastic window frames, which I am not painting. The outlet and switch plates are getting painted or replaced with something decorative, sure, but the actual bit you put the plugs into is staying as it is, I’m not painting that shit). But, fortunately, Dude comes of graphic designer types, and came through for me.

[image: a man’s hands, holding a white subway tile and several basically-white paint chips, in front of a hardware store display of paint chips in every shade imaginable of white, beige, black, or gray. This is my idea of hell.]

We tried lime green with the teal. It looked banger as fuck, but the only problem was, it also looked exactly like a really classic IKEA duvet cover pattern from about 2000. I could not paint my kitchen to look like the duvet cover Dude had when we met. That is not going to work out, psychically.

I picked a brilliant orange, and also hated it. It looked like… the 1970s. it looked. Too much. It popped but like, in a slightly upsetting way. it was giving Miami vibes, in an early-90s kind of way.

I dithered, and finally Dude went and picked a less red orange, in fact called Joyful Orange. That looked much better, and I got sample pots of Joyful Orange and Bella Vista to take home. (They are SEVEN DOLLARS each can you believe. Ah well.)

[image description: In the center of the photo, a section of wall trim is painted bright yellow-orange, next to a section of wall painted deep teal. To the right, a blue-washed cabinet corner, the white tile backsplash, and a section of counter with the tea kettle on it; to the left is the paler yellow in the distance of the living room, with a bunch of blurry stuff piled in the middle of the room.]

It’s. Sort of parrot colors? But it’s bright and it’s bold. I like it in every lighting situation. So I think this is what I’m going with.

And then for the outlet covers, I got one lighter shade of turquoise, and then dug out my craft paints. I bought a couple of spare outlet covers at the hardware store– forty-eight cents apiece? I’d be crazy not to– lightly buffed them with some fine sandpaper, and went to town. This is just the first layer, once it dries I’m going to go back over and try to add realistic veining and like metallic glitter and such to make them look like turquoise gemstone material.

[image: lying on a crinkled paper towel, a US-style outlet cover is mottled in shades of turquoise paint, in an irregularly-textured pattern.]

Ah maybe I should do a layer of clear coat and then do the veining? We’ll see. I’m not sure. (Your picture was not posted)