The house. Within a month of moving in we replaced the front doors, installed FLOR, created two new living spaces, painted the interior, fixed up the shelves and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. In December we replaced the toilets. The flanges were not installed correctly, so we installed the toilets on platforms that I shaped with a Dremel tool (and I coughed up cement board micro-bits for weeks). The pretty Marvin windows were rotten, rotten, rotten, despite lots of paint, paint, paint, so in February we replaced them, and the rotten framing around them. The roof leaked, so we replaced it in April. The siding leaked, so we peeled it back and found a happy family of rotten 2×4’s. Of course now the studs are replaced, and then we re-installed most of the cedar lap siding on the first floor.

And then we had to paint it. In between work, babies, and a scrambled brain we chose a color after a few days of deliberating, and bought a whole bunch of it.

And boy, was it bright, like the sky on a summer day. So we decided to paint the interior of the patio with it, and paint the exterior grey again.

But we were going to be smart. We were going to paint it the pretty green-grey that the house was originally painted, not the dark, coastal swamp mud color it is now. We brought home more paint chips. Lots of paint chips. The closest color to the original color (determined from a piece of siding that hadn’t been painted since the house was built) seemed to be a color called “Rhino.” I like rhinoceroses, so a rhino color seemed okay. To be sure we were on the right track, we drove to the architect’s house. We liked his house color. It seemed pretty close to “Rhino.”. Feeling groovy, we bought 10 gallons of rhinoceros-colored paint, a grey color with a hint of green.

This weekend my head spun and hurt. The house got painted while Matt played with babies and kept them away from my head. Sunday evening, like a bat emerging from its cave, I walked outside and blinked. And then I panicked. Where our house before looked dark and unwelcoming, now our house shines, like the moon at night. The rhino glows.

That paint color has not business on our house, which looks gaudy and bloated. That paint has no business on our street, in the company of houses painted with more subdued and modest colors. And really, “Rhino” bore no resemblance to the color we thought we bought.

I keep thinking of the dorm room at Rice that had a black Pink Floyd-style ceiling. They were on to something, with that. Can I paint the house black?

The upstairs siding (wood covered with vinyl) is in places rotten and disintegrating. We’re replacing it next. The upstairs siding was orininally painted a color that was 25% saturation of the first floor’s color. We can do that; whatever we paint the bottom of the house, we know how to match the top.

Lessons:

• Caring about a house color gets you into nothing but trouble. Just paint it black.
• Paint chips, test daubs on the can, and a whole lot of paint on the wall on a hot summer day are all different, even though they’re all rhinos.
• Don’t assume they mean they grey one when they say, “Rhino.”
• Doesn’t Pantone make paint, now? That way you’ll have a number that you can remember forever.
• Plant lots of trees by your house. They you don’t have to stare at the walls as much (and notice how the color isn’t what you wanted).

Plans:

• Stop losing sleep (see the time stamp on this post?) and getting brain headaches (again, see the time stamp on this post?) over paint color.
• Then, um, maybe pick something else.

Considerations:
I know, considering everything, 2007 has thus far been an excellent year. Really, I have nothing to complain about. For all that’s happened, you’re okay, I’m okay, we’re all okay. But should home ownership be this complicated? I miss my old house, painted a randomly-chosen color one lazy afternoon. It looked just fine, and I’m sure the studs in the wall weren’t rotten, and I know it didn’t leak.

As for the new house . . . are you sure I can’t paint it black?

I have ten minutes. I’m going to try to sleep before I have to be up for the day.