Color My World, or at Least My Bathroom

It is easier to choose a name for a child than it is to choose a paint color.  To make matters even more difficult, the paint colors come with names--cute names, historical names, noble names, food-associated names, even coffee-related names abound. 

Before I continue, however, look and see what's been happening with the PROJECT.

When I returned home from my parents', I found that things were shaping up quite a bit...

Plumbing and electrical work had been completed.  Walls were going up instead of coming down. 

The building inspector was very impressed...

And look...

...my new best friend has moved in!  Nice to meet ya new tub-not-made-of-ice-cold-cast-iron, can't wait to get to know you!

Unfortunately, it was not yet time for the faucet to be installed, which made my new friend unusable.  Soooooo...

...over the river and through the woods to grandmothers house we did go...again.  Eventually, with the aid of much snow blowing and a shovel or two, we returned home to find...

...tile! 

Those white dots are spacers which hold each tile in place while the "glue" on the back dries.  The spacers can be purchased in a number of sizes.  I think these were 1/8 of an inch.  Only two rows at a time can be installed so that the tiles don't all slide into the tub!  (A girl can sure learn a lot while she takes pictures of her father-in-law doing all of the work!)

While each set of tile rows dried, the walls were "primed" or is it "primered". 

All that white made the room seem so full of possibility, so ready for the brilliant color that had been carefully and thoughtfully selected.  Which brings me back to my earlier assertion that it is easier to name a child than to pick a paint.

The color I thought I wanted ended up being the very same color as the "border" tiles for the shower so I asked my Man to bring some paint chips in that general color family back from Lowe's on his next trip. 

Now, my Man loves a good "paint name".  He can still remember the names of the paint colors in our first home.  "Cabin red," he would tell you, was the name of the color of our room and "Crushed Strawberry" graced the wall of one of the kid's rooms. "Urban Putty" was the name of a color he adored on the wall of a friend's home in North Carolina.  In our current home we have Cabin Red (its a good one!), Almond Oil, Sauteed Mushroom, and many many more.  We are "colors on the wall" kind of people, so it was difficult to settle on a necessary neutral for the bathroom.  Neutral sounds so simple doesn't it?  Ha!

Do you know how many colors of neutral there are?  After choosing a darkish-neutral answering to the stately name of "Churchill Hotel something or other", my Man took off to snag a gallon.

He made me go with him on the next trip.  The next trip, the one on which we were to choose a different color.  A few moments before we began the next trip, I peeked into the bathroom to see what the "Churchill Hotel something or other" looked like.  My Man had already trimmed and painted the better part of one wall and that wall was a glowing GOLDEN YELLOW. 

We left Larry and all four children in a cloud of aggravated dust and drove straight to the paint chip section of Lowe's.  After much, much deliberation, we chose one of the 456 Ecrus and waited patiently while the paint mixer-upper did his work.  But don't you know, that little dot that they place on the paint lid to show you the color in the can was the same color that had caused this encore trip in the first place!

Happily, the paint mixer-upper was willing to let us have a "do over" and we began anew.  Finally, after many fun names, but unworthy colors like Oatmeal, Cattail, Mocha, Coffee, Antique Lace, Barley, Khaki, and Wicker had been cast aside, we made our selection "Stone 2".  We took the blandly named paint chip to the paint mixer-upper who looked at us and said, "Is that your final answer?" (Just kidding!) 

Paint in hand, we headed home, and my painter Man put Stone to walls.  "Stone" as it would happen turned out to be the very color of the border tiles for the shower surround that we were hoping to avoid originally.  Oh well, it looks good and I'm not facing the paint guy again, forgiving as he was! 

"Stone 2" does not make for breath-taking photography, but...

...there you have it in all of its...glory?

There was one color that I really, really thought was perfectly named for use in a bathroom.  I so very much wanted it to work in ours, but it was not to be. 

"Warm Buff"

Just screams cozy new bathroom, don't ya think?