Ultimately, my Valentine’s Day gift to the Gardner was a fresh, neutral coat of gray paint on the walls in his bathroom. This may sound a bit odd, but it made perfect sense to us…and ended somewhat of a decorating stand-off at our house. I will explain.
Before moving to the new Pines, we spent years in a home that required very little paint. Our walls were, by our design, all of wood; pine, cedar, wainscoting. Our downstate home had required considerable paint maintenance both inside and out. After years of slinging a paintbrush, the old homestead in Peaceful Pines was a tremendous change. I was glad to leave the paint and wallpaper rat-race of plaster walls of the 1980’s and never looked back.
However, after nearly thirty years of wood, we left the old Pines for the new Pines, and walked into the world of color once again. After a year and a half of living in our new environment, it remains a challenge for us to arrive at good color choices to finish the task. The old neutral has been replaced by a new neutral and so, after much debate, we welcomed shades of grays to our walls. However, this choice was not a totally unanimous decision and did not involve every room. What began as a bargain became a bluff.
The Gardener has been blissfully unaware of color choices for years. For example, in our former cedar lined bathroom, changing the look meant putting up a new shower curtain, towels, rugs and changing accessories. Much the same rules applied in the kitchen; new valance, towels, placemats and so on, and we were in business. I must admit, this was a piece of cake décor and provided an endless blank palate. We slid by for a long time. And then we moved.
It was easy enough to agree on a whiter-shade-of-pale kind of gray called Burnished Clay for the living and dining rooms, and a bit darker shade for the kitchen. The caveat here was that this was the end of the gray. It was not to appear in any other room, bedroom or bath. “Too much gray!” was the Gardener’s protest. And so, began the great bathroom color debate. We bandied about a selection of colors and peppered one wall with paint samples. After my many choices were vetoed, I drew a line in the sand; he must choose so that the job could be done before Thanksgiving. Enough was enough, and I preferred gray.
The Gardener chose a rather, shall we say ‘bold’ yellow. So I went to Marion Lumber and purchased a gallon of something akin to a buttercup and painted a large spot in the middle of a wall. I left it for a couple of days. The wall really screamed for gray. I got no comment beyond “That’ll be alright.” As I spread the yellow around the room, the color took me to a place I had not thought of in years; my grandma’s small Blevins Street 1960’s bathroom. It was always this same buttercup yellow. It must have been the paint fumes. I took a break. This wouldn’t have happened with gray.
The bathroom was done by Thanksgiving and the arrival of our company. The best reviews the Gardener’s yellow bathroom got was, “Well…wow, it’s a change.” Or “Yup, that’s yellow.” The yellow paint replaced wallpaper from the early ‘90’s and was indeed some kind of change. And it was fresh. Score one for the Gardener.
That brings us to this past weekend when I decided I could no longer put off painting the hall. Spring quickly approaches and it is more than time. There are four doors, an archway, and linen cupboards on one end. It is almost more detail than wall, and so had thus far escaped. I pulled out the Burnished Clay gray paint, the necessary tools, and gave said hall a much needed fresh look. Before I hung up my paint roller, I put a large swath of said gray on a wall in the Gardener’s buttercup bath. This war was over.
On Tuesday it took me three hours to knock-off the bathroom paint job; start, to put the rugs back down, finish. Gray it is. I think I won this battle. I may have painted the bath twice, but I’ve won the war. I get to choose the fresh color for our bedroom. The Gardener may raise a heck of a garden, but he is not a painter or a decorator.
Our Marion photo this week is from the Great Ice Storm of February 22, 1922. There are quite a few local photos of this famous icing event. The location of these homes within the Village has been a mystery. The most familiar things can be unidentifiable when the settings are changed. After a long look, I am willing to bet the farm that this photo is of the Dague and John Alberts homes on West Main St, at the Blevins St corner. The pole with all of the downed lines and the covered fire hydrant are on the south corner, across from the school. Both homes are long gone, Cora Dague’s home was replaced by a new one in the 1950’s and was the long-time home to Leon Dyke and his wife. The Alberts home was torn down years ago.