Butter with a touch of daffodil – Hive and Nest

Yesterday I finished painting India’s bedroom. It’s cute, but still too messy to take an “after” picture. The bathroom next to India’s room is the main floor bath, and I couldn’t help but notice how boring and ugly it is. The color on the walls is the same beige that is in a lot of our house. It is the color I am trying my best to eradicate. Beige is not really an appropriate name, though. The color should be called “Dingy” or perhaps “New York City Puddle”. Drab and unappealing.

I thought about breaking out the pale green paint that I used in my bedroom and throwing on a few coats in the bathroom, but India reminded me that we have green paint in nearly every room that I’ve painted (most of the rooms have two colors so don’t think my house is head-to-toe monochromatic. Plus they’re all different shades of green.)  I have no yellow in my house yet, so that’s what I decided to go with. Yellow matches with the light blue and green that I have throughout the first floor.  

I’m sure you’ve done enough paining to know that choosing a color is more than just glancing at a few swatches at the hardware store and then handing one to the lady at the paint counter. This is my normal process:

–Go to Home Depot (I like their paint the best.  I really love the little sample sizes that you can get at Lowe’s, though.  I hate having to buy a whole quart just to try out a color!*  But Lowe’s paint-matching qualities are a little substandard, if you ask me). Get a whole ton of swatch cards. Stare at the swatches for several days and get it narrowed down to a couple that look promising.

–Back to Home Depot to get two quarts of the chosen colors ($11 each. Rip off!). Return home to paint large test patches on the wall.  Marvel at how completely different the actual paint looks from the swatch cards.  Are they even the same colors?  Decide paint swatches are completely pointless.

–Back to Home Depot to try just one more color. This one will be it.  The Holy Grail of Yellows. 

–It’s not.  Too bright.  The first color was too dark,  The second color too pasty.  Hey, maybe too dark + too light + a touch of too pasty would be just right!

–Get out a few plastic cups to make a some custom paint concoctions.  Try them on the wall. That’s more like it!  Now the wall is resembling a really hideous quilt.  Ask any family member who passes by which color they like.  Dismiss their opinion because what do they know?

–Settle on one color.  Paint a white index card with a couple of coats of it.

–Take the card to Home Depot (try not to look murderous when the same paint guy says, “did you miss me?”) and have it color matched.  Now you have the recipe for your perfect color.  

Here is my Wall o’ Yellow (It only took me five tries to get a nice yellow.  I’m getting so good at this.  It took me 13 tries to find the perfect green for my bedroom. The letter next to each swatch is for the name of the color.  Otherwise it gets too confusing.) The winner is M2 on the bottom.

It’s a delicious buttery yellow that is not too pale, not too bright; warm and sunny, not lemony.

Here is the recipe if you’re in the market for a lovely yellow. Or you can go through all this nonsense yourself.  Be my guest!

And the best part of my painting frenzy?  The green and yellow paint in my hair from leaning against a wet wall not once, but twice.  TWICE!  And it’s church today.  

P.S. I don’t know if painting burns any calories, but I was so exhausted last night I barely made it into my bed before crashing.  My body feels like an arthritic old woman’s this morning.  

*The lady at Home Depot told me that they’ll be getting the equipment to make small sample sizes sometime in the next few months. Hooray!