Decorating with Color Fail

Anyone who knew me through and survived the First Street years (Adrienne) knows that my color palette doesn’t extend far beyond the brown family.

There was the time we painted the basement – the WHOLE basement – a light pink. The pink stayed up for a few days before it gave me a headache, and then we re-painted it a cream color.

The kitchen and living room got a makeover in about 2005 with the colors “Harvest Brown” and “Mississippi Mud.” Mud & Brown pretty aptly describe my color comfort zone.

When Mom arrived on Sunday with a suitcase of old sweatpants and new paintbrushes, I had to make some choices about colors: wall colors, cabinet colors, hardware colors, countertop colors… And I was going to be bold and break out of the mud-brown rut (ditch, maybe?) I have been in for ten years.

This plan was bound to fail when I chose my granite color:


But I thought that, even with these hues, I might be able to break out of the browns into the grays, so I bought a quart (a quart of paint for a whole room does not speak to the buyer’s confidence in the choice) of “Gentle Rain.”


All the time we were painting, however, Prince was in my head singing “Purple Rain.” The "color" had to go. At least we didn’t get any further than the soffit above the stove:


And the new color is… “Wheat Bread.” Yep. Brownish: