March needs…a redecorating project. Change the inside of the house while you wait for the outside to change.
We’re going for a Mediterranean-inspired sanctuary. But our attempt to choose a light terracotta led us to buy…peach. Shudder.
That’ll teach us to attempt to tame our colour intuition. I don’t think we’ve ever chosen the less intense version of a colour before. We usually just go with our gut. Bold and colourful is how we like our surroundings. When we bought this house, it was entirely grey. Every wall. The carpets. A light grey. The whole place a chilly, dull structure that seemed to whisper to me as we wandered around, “Please, buy me and put some colour in me and let me be a home.”
Don’t worry, we’ve found a nice deep clay colour, now, a lovely hot chocolate mixed with chili sort of hue. Earthy and subdued in tone, but intense in delivery.
Handmade Homeschool 
Ah, pre-owned house colors. Our current one was pale pink. Everywhere. Even the countertops are mauve! Ick! Meanwhile, the kitchen was baby blue … with wallpaper of bunnies marching around. Downright scary! We’re having entirely too much fun splashing some life into this place with bold color.
Can’t wait to see your new color … sounds delicious!
I made the exact same color error (peach instead of terra cotta) many years ago. My husband kept telling me it wasn’t “that bad,” but I insisted that it was exactly the color of a 1980’s era hotel room. Ech. In an attempt to correct it, I then overcompensated with a much too bright orange. I finally gave up and painted it white!
Ours was white everywhere. Everywhere.
As a fellow Manitoban, I’m sure you can understand the depression factor of looking out the windows for 6 months of the year at fields and fields of white, then turning around and seeing the same.
Colour saved my sanity.
LOL! I have no idea why but just this Saturday we were talking with some friends of ours and telling them about a living room we saw that was painted bright vibrant yellow, and how shocking it seemed at first glance, and how quickly it became completely _right_ to the eyes and uplifting to the emotions. Guess whose living room we were talking about?
We’ve been down that peachy road recently. It’s so tricky to figure out the interplay of the lights (sunlight, lamplight) with the color when it comes to that color family. Two paint jobs later, we’ve arrived at the correct hue for our current location; I bet it would look awful at a different latitude, though.
MIL is a realtor, and she proclaims the gospel of neutral colors whenever she sees our house. Umm, yeah, maybe neutral is good for selling, but we’re planning on living here, not running a perpetual house-for-sale show.
Our tiny, dark dining room was rust. Dark, lockjaw rust. It was awful. The laundry room still is, but the dining room is something called gecko green now, with red accents. So much more cheerful!
We did the same thing some years ago, and ended up with peace walls for a while… it wasn’t so bad, really, but not at all what was intended!! :o)
Sounds…interesting…..thank god you threw out BOTH the gray and the Golden Girl’s peach. I thought of you and your very awesome way of capturing a moment when I took the picture in my post today. A reading moment. A nature moment. A friend moment. http://hopewellmomschoolreborn.blogspot.com/2009/03/twilight.html
Our house was white – inside and out. White house with white trim and a white rug in a white saskatchewan winter. BLAH!!! And lets not even mention a white rug with a toddler and two dogs!!! What in the heck were these people who sold us the house thinking????
Oh, then there was the floor to ceiling all four walls in the livingroom. The ONLY splash of any kind of colour in the house was the livingroom wallpaper. One inch stripes floor to ceiling – white (of course!) and NAVY BLUE. Can you say “prison inmate”??? It was the kind of wall paper that when you looked at it long enough you could almost understand why some people take drugs – because you honestly got what you could only akin to a “buzz” off it!
The wallpaper came off and we ripped out the rug – gorgeous cherry hardwood flooring and “Cuban Cigar” paint job (thanks Debbie Travis for such a beautiful colour!)
Now, if I could only get hubby to agree with the furniture I want, I would be set. He wants a lovely little sofa he found for cheap in his friend’s garage after a divorce – hideous PURPLE massive sectional…
But honey, it’s CHEAP!!!
Yeah, then put it in your garage because it AIN’T NEVER GONNA ENTER THIS HOUSE.
WHO ever heard of a purple cow???
I used to have my kitchen painted Debbie Travis’ Cuban Cigar and would like to return it to this color. By chance, do you have the formula for the color?My old paint can is long gone!