Color choice overwhelm

Any idea what I’ve been up to this week?

Yeah, I’m mired in choosing-paint-color hell.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to paint over any brick. I’m just trying to determine which wall, trim and cabinet colors coordinate with the brick.

I’ve had it with the stark white and the multiple different colors of blue. NONE of which match the natural hues of the brown cement floor and the brick and wood accents. The blues have got to go, asap.

This picture only looks like two blues, but wall in the middle is actually a shade of green and the wall next to it with the door is actually a dark blue. There’s yet another blue on the wall with the mirror. Altogether there are FOUR different kinds of blue in this one, modest-sized bathroom. It’s not good.

The guest room is light blue, bright pink, and some sort of neon orange color, yikes!

My goal is to introduce muted natural colors without darkening the house too much. It has a low ceiling and very few windows. I understand why someone painted the original wood ceilings white, although I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t want the house to be too gloomy inside, but Tucson is a hot, bright place. I want to bring back this house’s original sense of natural colors and textures. And blue isn’t it!

Ideally I’d do the walls in a very light beige. The problem is, as you go lighter, the beige colors tend to start looking either pinkish or yellowish. The brick has a pink shade, and it turns out that many light beige colors look too yellow against it. But if I go too far away from yellow, it becomes pinkish. And I do not want pink walls.

Here’s the color that is on the walls in Albuquerque. I brought it to Tucson to test it here, because it was handy, and it looks good in Albuquerque. But it looks too yellow in this house.

Of course after a couple of days of this, my brain started giving me related but useless information, like, “Oh look, “A True Antique 7003-18″ matches my cutting board! And that junk mail, that matches…oh wait. Never mind.”

By the way, that too-yellow corner next to the brick wall is where my Christmas tree is supposed to be, but I’m too busy testing colors against the brick to get on with Christmas. I’ve got lights on the tree, that’s step one. If I cropped the picture real tight we could almost imagine that painter’s plastic drop cloth is supposed to be drifting snow!

I swore I wasn’t going to do the painting myself! And look at that. Drop cloths, paint brushes…what am I doing? I still plan to hire professionals to paint our house. One of these days. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to pick out the right colors. It’s very expensive to have professionals out a second time when the color isn’t right!

My house has become a bit of a mess this week because I overestimate how much energy I have and get myself into projects I have no business doing. I’m just not recovered yet from the cancer treatments. Meanwhile, I want to do a good job of picking colors for the walls, and I want to get decorated for Christmas and I want…to have a normal life, darn it!

Plus we have an enormously long list of things like “install water filter, fix door, put up shelving in laundry room, assemble guest bed…” that aren’t even on my regular to-do list, that has the normal things like “water plants.” Come to think of it, I should go do that now!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com