Painting is, uh, fun...

After stripping all the holiday remnants out of the shop last month, the place was looking a little bleak. There's always that bit of sadness from seeing your surroundings go from rich and full and warm and ready for you to sit down with a cup of hot cocoa to... emptier and less colorful. That's January. But on the good side, don't you feel like starting fresh, moving things around, and redoing certain areas? Spring cleaning has its upside.

So we decided to do a little painting here and there. Nothing too dramatic, but it feels that way to me. A few years ago we had painted our little soap room walls pale pink and chocolate. Only the pink never sat right with me. The minute we moved all our displays and 300 soaps back in, I decided I didn't like it. Too dark, too peptol. Guess what reaction that was met with? Heh. So we lived with it until now, and just redid it, quite to my liking. I went with the palest, sheerest pink I could find for the upper wall area (it's divided by a sort of chair rail), and a medium, pebble gray for the bottom. It's just perfect now (and I'm keeping good records of the colors so we can find them again if needed). Other parts didn't go so well, and we had to redo a few things here and there. I learn more every time. So here are a few Handy Tips for Choosing Paint:

Paint will always end up darker on the wall than it looks on the sample chip, or even the little brushstroke on top of the can. Go paler in the same color family to get the effect you want. That pale pink we just used? It was so pale I thought it would be mistaken for white... but it is perfect. The color is also going to change depending on how the light reflects off of it. Different times of day will change it, too. There's nothing you can do about that.

Some colors are harder than others to get right. Yellows and reds are the toughest ones. For one section, I wanted a pale, creamy buttery yellow... the lightest possible version of ochre. But yellows tend to go green, or too peachy (ugh!), or too bright. Instead of that warm, creamy color you were dreaming of, you end up living inside a banana. Be careful. And red: ohh, better to just stay away. We didn't do any reds here, but I know they're tough. Getting the red right is the first battle; it can also go too orangey or too brown or too deep. But the worst is yet to come: when you want to change that color, you're going to need at least a coat or two of primer, and probably several coats of the new color, because the red does not want to go away.

Go with a good paint brand to begin with. The cheaper ones don't go on as well, and coverage can be streaky or spotty, forcing you into another coat or two.

Finally, keep your color chips and notes in a folder you can find again. Makes touching up so much easier. Especially if you forget and store your paints in a spot that freezes, because that wrecks them. Yep, found that out the hard way.