Elaine’s Place

Ahhh.. now this is an interesting subject in this household. What a shock when we first came to choose the colors of some remodeling we were doing. What I found when I arrived here was pink walls (varying shades of different pinks), red carpet (with a pattern), and burgundy leather furniture. I nearly ran for my life…but…

The biggest shock came when we decided it was way past time to change the colors. I thought since we were stuck with the red carpet and bergundy furniture…at the very least, we should have a couple of shades of gray on the wall.

If you’ve ever worked with gray, then you already know it is almost impossible to find the right combinations of grays that go together but I was willing to tackle it armed with the knowledge I had gained the last time I attempted such a feat.

Little did I realize what I would run into. First, Russ wanted to be completely involved. Well, that shouldn’t have surprised me as we do everything together. To make a long story shorter, we ended up with a living room full of the paint I needed to have it the color I wanted and to shorten the story even further, we ended up halling all the paint back a week later. He just didn’t want it!

It took about 1-1/2 years later to finally go with neutral colors and so different shades of cream is what we ended up doing. I can say that with these colors (as boring as they seemed to me), the cost was cut in half.

Now we are facing changing the carpet (finally) and I dreaded going to the stores looking for carpets but we decided to brave it today with both of us not wanting a repeat of the arguments that insued the last time.

Off we went and bracing myself, I looked at one that was a deep shade of burgundy with a small pattern…he liked it! Wow! But as I got to thinking…there will be nothing bergundy in the room (other than the furniture and since we’ll likely be changing that at some point…shouldn’t I stay with the neutral tones. So with trepidation, I pointed to one with different shades of cream and brown.  

I knew that the bergundy was going to turn red and the brown shades would be my choice but…I had to get it past Russ.

The next obstacle we encountered is we needed to see the samples in the light of our own house and compared to the walls, etc…but…the store clerk would not let us take the samples out of the store. What good does it do for us not to see it in our home?

There was only one thing to do! Beg! And that’s what we did. I suspect (after a £5.00 deposit, name and address) that he let us have them just to get rid of us out of his store. Anyway, we brought it home and there Russ could see what I meant about the blending of the wall colors and the carpet with the creams and brown that I wanted! Wow! Another hurdle covered.

Since we weren’t actually buying it today (We’ve decided to brave a few more stores just to see we are getting a good deal), let’s hope our next store encounter will be as nice as this one was.

Imagine! Not one single argument and we even managed to figure out what we’ll do with the carpet in the hallway. This all involves a leaky radiator which allowed for a claim and what we’ll use to fund this exercise but…they won’t cover the hallway (which is the same now)!

I am so happy! Not because we are getting new carpet, although that’s a good thing (this one is close to 15 years old) but…we came away from the color choosing without one cross word! Life is good!