Cameo is the new Beige

Yay! I have new paint. After buying a fridge, I had an interesting half hour trying to buy paint at sears. I'd hoped for a trial size, but no such luck. I was lucky to get paint with color in it. I got a discount, for being patient, on a gallon of something I thought would work and a quart of something risky. I have my accent colors nailed (the green of the blog, and a deep sunset orange) but the "warm white" has been giving me fits. It was a dirty yellow when I moved in. I picked a color that matched on my chips and it wound up being the exact same color of yellow just a tint more toward white. Then I was stuck. Recently, I decided to go beige instead of white and started breathing easier. After looking around, I decided the best color is that of the badly designed kitchen cabinets I'm going to gleefully rip out in the next couple months.

At 4:30 (breakfast was long and I had a lot of stuff to move out of the way) I decided the S.e.ars paint was for crap. I'd tried to start painting with the gallon, but it didn't cover worth anything and dripped. My back up plan was formed when I had brunch with some girlfriends today, and one is related to a professional painter. The friend and painter both recommended Dunn Edwards, and told me how to find the store. The backup to that backup plan was the Benjamin Moore store with lousy hours, but 240 shades of white, right around the corner. The DE store, also close, was still open, but just barely. I took in my dollop of the bad quality paint and a door from off my cabinet. We found a likely color from the fan they keep at the counter, and I was decisive and chose one with very little waffling, for me. The guy asked when I wanted to pick up the paint and I said, "Oh, um, I'm painting now, can you accommodate that?" They could so I paid and waited a few minutes for them to mix it.

In the meantime, I returned the cabinet door to the car then browsed around trying to find a chip of the color I chose. By the time I found the chip, I started panicking that it was the wrong color because all the other chips were better in some way, blah blah blah and I'd just spent $50 (yikes!) on a single gallon of paint. What if I'd chosen poorly? When I got it home, I found it's an even better color than the $20 paint that would have required at least 3 coats to cover uniformly. Long story short, color is perfect, goes on smoothly, and it calms me to see it on the wall, unlike the yellowy white its covering. Totally worth the $50 and the midstream decision to change paint.

Then my neighbor noticed the activity and stopped by to return a replacement of the cutting in brush they'd borrowed ages ago, which I'd forgotten I'd lent them, and solved the mystery of the missing brush. Looking into the places where I'd used a foam brush, I think I'll be putting that brush to use tomorrow.

To top off the evening of painting, my grrlfriend and I met yet another good friend of hers at a fancy Italian place (our waiter was from north of Venice) in Santa Monica (corner SM and 7th), and had some truly fantastic food with tasty wine. The service rocked and we chatted for hours and tipped well. We thought about painting more when we got back, but my friend was dead on her feet. Turns out my new couch makes a reasonable guest bed if you're not super tall. She's sleeping the sleep of the just as I write this. I need to go to sleep now so we can hit up a baby shower and book swap I'm sort of co-hosting tomorrow in Orange County, but I'm coasting on Dr. Pepper fumes and excitement about how good this new color looks.