Getting What I Want

I recently posted about painting my bathroom. I complained about how the paint had bubbled up on the walls in some places. I thought it was because I showered in there too soon after painting, but most paint stores that I've called since believe that I didn't clean the walls well enough. Actually, what happened was I cleaned the walls just fine, I just didn't rinse the bleach off well enough.

Anyway, this post is about how I ended up with the paint. It's as much about my personality as anything. And I was inspired to do this post by a post on Bella Knitting, titled Obsessions which was about how your personality comes through in your knitting (and other projects). First of all, here's the tile that inspired me when doing this room. It belonged to my mother, but I don't remember ever seeing it up in our house. It's a Mary Englebreit from 1976 and I just love it. I'm not a huge fan of ME's later stuff, but I love this one. I had to take it off the wall and photograph it under my light tent to prevent massive glare spots, so you can't see how it looks next to the wall color. Sorry.



For me, choosing colors to paint is always somewhat painful. There are just so many beautiful ones to choose from. For some reason, for the bathroom, I just picked a color that I immediately loved and stuck with it. I just stopped at the paint store and bought it. right there. on the spot. with no second guessing. This was a big deal for me.

So, I got home from the paint store, looked at the paint swatch, looked at the dot of paint on top of the can, looked at the swatch again. They were different colors. Not very different. But different enough. I asked Jeff, and he said they were the same color. I asked my daughter, and she said they were the same color. I asked my sister, and she agreed with me. It was missing the pink. The color that I wanted doesn't have a lot of pink, just the tiniest bit, but it was missing from the paint I now had.

So, I decided to go ahead and paint the bathroom (a friend was coming over to help and I just wanted to get it done). The color was fine. It looked nice. It was livable. But, as I lay in bed that night, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I got up and took the next picture to document my madness.


Do you see the difference? (Besides the texture and glossiness, that is.) So, I realized that my problem wasn't really about the paint color. It was about getting what I wanted. I've always been the one to accept things as they are. Once, when I was little, the shoe store didn't have the velcro shoes that I wanted. So I made up a reason to make me feel better, "Well, they would probably snag on the branches when I climb trees" and my dad was so proud of me for accepting things as they are, for inventing this justification of why I didn't want them anyway. Instead of asking to go to another shoe store, I took what they had and went home with lace-ups. My sister, on the other hand, once threw an absolute fit because the paper towel my mom gave her was missing the corner where it hadn't torn off evenly. Mostly we are this way because I am much lazier than my sister; she will do whatever it takes to make something happen. Me, not so much. But, I wonder how much deeper it goes than that.

So, I decided that I wanted the color that I had ordered and I was going to do my best to get it. I was going to make the effort, just to see what it felt like. I brought back the can, which was half empty, and explained myself. The clerk was in agreement with Jeff and Joey that the colors were very very very close to the same color. He told me he could add a bit more red to what I had, but he couldn't make any promises. I started to go when I realized that I hadn't tried very hard. I told him that the color was not what I had ordered, and while it was somewhat dumb of me to paint an entire bathroom a color I didn't like, still, I felt that I deserved to get what I paid for. I was nice, not ranting or anything, but I just kept repeating myself. After a minute or two, he decided to color match the swatch that I had brought in. And guess what... the formula for the color match of the swatch was not he same as the formula for the swatch. It should've been, but it wasn't. So, there in black and white, I had proof that I wasn't imagining things. It even had different colors (blue instead of black, gold instead of yellow), not just different proportions.

So, he mixed up a new batch of paint, which I used to repainted my bathroom. I'll not get into the unpleasantness with the bubbles because I am feeling rather proud of myself right now and would rather not dwell on the fact that sometime soon I'll have to re-repaint the bathroom after I sand the bubbled paint and reclean the wall.

So, here is one wall, with the new towels I bought, with the framed tile sitting on top of the towel rack because, well, I couldn't get one picture that showed all the things that I like about my new bathroom at once.


It felt good to do this. to make the effort. to get what I want. I doubt that I'll become obsessive and uptight and nit-picky because, like I mentioned, I'm fairly lazy. But it does feel good to know that when I really want to, I can get the things that I want.

Note- Jenny, just to be clear... I don't think you're obsessive, uptight or nit-picky. Thanks for your help with everything.