October 25, 2022
The termite issue is nearly resolved. After spending the last few weeks consulting with engingeers and reviewing bids from contractors and electricians to fix what may or may not be actual structual damage to our house, we’ve landed on a solution. With bids ranging from $3500 to $35,000, it’s a relief to have the engingeer sign off on the low estimate. “Buildings want to stay standing,” he tells us. Ours is in good shape. The intervention is for good measure, since we can swing it. After mentally preparing to never eat out or take vacations again, $3500 feels like a steal.
While they’re at it, we can essentially finish the space. When we initially moved in we removed the old fuel oil tank and surrounding detritus; we’ve since installed storage shelves, a sink, laundry, our old fridge. A few years ago, between tenants, we put in a laminate floor over the bumpy concrete. Now they’ll build out a wall over the exposed brick to execute the repairs, finish off the remaining walls and exposed ceiling with drywall, install can lights. Instead of a scary dark closet it will look boringly normal. We’ll work out the timing for the repairs this week; it should be done by Thanksgiving.
Then Susan, our organizing magician, will swoop in and set up all our stuff in a logical aesthetically pleasing manner. The actual apartment will be emptied, and it will be time for the fun part: paint and wallpaper.
We ordered 8 rolls of art deco swan wallpaper this week, set to cover one big wall in the main space. Do swans convey a feeling of rest? Maybe they signal the inner transformation underway in our guests, the deep soul work giving way to the emerging true self, whole and healed, beautiful and at peace in its belovedness. To be honest I picked it for less symbolid reasons: I just I liked it. But maybe it will accidentally inspire someone to shed their inner ugly duckling.
Paired with the wallpaper, paint. Four samples in color options to test out in the basement’s light, to be specific. One dark blue to try on the door, three variations on light blue for some smaller accents. Silky mint? Mellow blue? It’s tempting to pick based on the color, but the second I start gushing about birds’ egg blue–it goes with the swans!–my husband jumps in. “No! Don’t let it sway you!’ Even so, when our eyes simultaneously fall on a calm greenish blue, we both holler at the same time, with the same excitement: “Resting place!”
When I’m at the paint store collecting the samples, my eyes can’t help fall on the superiorly designed sample cards of the Magnolia Home collection by Joanna Gaines, extra large with elegant fonts. And the names! The colors aren’t necessarily better than the paint store brand–there are far fewer, and they have a muted, moody point of view. But the names! Some are pegged to the colors, like most paint names, but pitched ever so slightly more precisely at a Pinterest-using, home-repair TV-watching, daydreaming target audience: Earl Gray. Sage Stem (Not to be confused with Silverado Sage.) Vine-Ripened Tomato. Freshly Cut Stems. Not just any tomato, not just any old stems.
Then there’s the scene setting, also not venturing too far afield from more standard paint names: Texas Summer, Texas Storm. Weathered Windmill, which happens after a Texas Storm. (The paint coat on the windmill not waterproof, I gather.) Olive Grove, for your summer house on the Mediterranean, I suppose.
And from there it’s just a free for all, evoking not a color or even a scene, but an aspiration of how you want your life to look, who you might want to be: Weekend, Gatherings, Sunday Stroll. Soft Landing, Wedding Band, Emmie’s Room. Locally Sown, Locally Grown. Home at Last, By the Fireplace, Lit Candles. Secondhand Find. Spontaneous. Well Watered.
It reminds me of the way I used to feel being exposed to promotions for essential oils: I knew they were doing some kind of marketing jujitsu on my mind, knew the supposed sales and deals and point accumulation was all perfectly pitched to lure me in, wind me around, and hand over my credit card. I knew it was a trick, but I still wanted to win the points game, buy the right combination to get the best ‘free gifts.’
These paint color names, I knew, were also designed to lure me in. They were so intentionally designed, telling a story about the person I could become if only my house was painted in Shiplap and Local Greenhouse. “It’s important that color tells a story,” Joanna Gaines has said, about her paint collection. But it isn’t a story about the paint, but about who it lets us become if we enter into the world it promises. Not a person who yells at my kids or forgets to empty old flower vases for too long past the expiration date. No, I would be a woman of Freshly Cut Stems, going for Sunday Strolls with my darling children, ready for Spontaneous adventures, not just naps. I knew her paints were christened to awaken those very feelings, was prepared for the siren song, but it called to me all the same.
I didn’t give in. Chained to the mast, so to speak, by the pre-selection we’d done, I left the paint store with exactly four samples, in pint sizes big enough to paint all the desired walls, if the colors are right. Less than $50, and even without Joanna Gaines’ nice fonts and evocative names, the room will be transformed. An ugly duckling into a literal swan.
