Making progress and thoughts about painting wood...

Little by little, I have been putting my stamp on this new home of ours, and it feels wonderful!  Last weekend I did some more painting, focusing this time on the wall of wood below the open staircase.

My husband had been outside mowing the lawn when I began working on this project.  I had told him weeks ago that I planned to paint the knotty pine walls.  He had said at that time that this was fine with him, but when he walked in the door on Friday afternoon, hot and tired, to get a drink of water and saw me painting the wood walls, he GASPED.  Audibly.  It took him a second to recover.  I was very casual and just said,"Hi, are you thirsty?"  He asked if I was sure I wanted to do this, and I said that of course I was sure.  Besides, at that point I was committed.  There was already paint on the wall.  

So, we went from this below... 

where the sunlight, along with the natural pine on the floor and walls, gives the room a very yellow cast,  

to this...

where my boston fern looks so very lush, and the yellow cast is gone.

When I told some friends I was going to paint the wood, they, too, had a similar reaction to my husband's, although not quite as audible.  I have written about painting wood walls before, and how many people find them to be sacred, where it is akin to sacrilege to blemish them with paint.  I am of the mind that your home should reflect your deepest desires and fantasies.  In the cottage of my fantasies, all the wood walls are painted.   The texture of the tongue and groove planks actually is more evident when the wood grain is not visible.

When I painted the drywall, no such gasp was heard by him.  Others cautioned me that painting things a shade of white would ruin the character of the cottage.  I disagree entirely.  The walls I have painted seemed to recede a few feet after the soft white paint was applied to them.

My efforts to banish the sage green from the house are on-going.  The wall with the patio doors is about 20' tall.  I haven't yet had the gumption to bring in the extension ladder and completely move all of the furniture out of the way in order to paint.  One must work up to these things slowly.  Eventually I know that I will wake up one day and decide I simply cannot take it anymore, and that will be that.  That is typically my way.

So, as I stated at the beginning of this post, little by little things are coming around to being the way I want them to be.  Decorating houses, like picking a partner, requires that one stay true to oneself, and not follow the preferences and tastes of others.  After all, we are the ones who live with our choices, not well-intentioned friends, and not all mistakes are easily fixed by covering up them up with a coat of paint.

Until next time...

Anne