it's easy, just pick out a paint chip

yeah right.

so we moved into our new apartment (which we were very happy about, for many reasons), and it came fully equipped with a stunning amount of white wall space. thankfully, ben (owner of the apartment / star of "miami social" - which is another blog post altogether) said we could paint, as long as we paint the walls white again before we move out. pretty standard. we decide it's best to only tackle the main room, so we don't have to paint the whole place again when we leave.

so the moving timeline went something like this: mom arrives tuesday night, mom packs entire apartment before thursday night (thank you, mom), dad arrives thursday night, and beginning friday morning, we get everything moved, unpacked, arranged, organized, with pictures on the walls before my parents fly out on sunday night. insert somewhere: we need to paint the main room.

so my thought process is this...i'm pretty creative, right? i'll just waltz down to home depot and pick out a color for the walls. duh. easy.

i had myself really convinced that i knew what i was doing. "oh, something neutral with a slight undertone of blue, but more of a green-blue tint, so it will tie in with my kitchen textiles..." blah, blah, blah blah.

so i'm thinking i've got this in the bag. friday flies by, and while ryan reminds us over and over that we have GOT to start painting, i'm like "oh, it won't take that long, don't worry about it..."

so sometime late friday mom and i head to the home depot on calle ocho, thinking that it's the closest. bad decision #1. not only is it NOT the closest, but it became very clear that we were the only people in the entire store who spoke english. and apparently all of the non-english-speaking people in south florida were painting their houses that weekend. no lie! i have never seen this many people buying paint at one time! mom and i can't even get to the paint chips without climbing over people...so i grab nearly every neutral paint chip within my reach, mom does the same, and we go back outside to the car to look at them. we narrow down, narrow down some more, and i finally arrive on a ralph lauren color ("oh, we'll just get them to color match this and buy behr paint instead..."). we head back to the counter, where there is 1 guy mixing paint for about 60 people in line. we then realize that we have to take a number...the guy calls 22. we are 38. awesome.

we wait. we wait some more. we go back through all of the chips. we go back outside. i leave my purse sitting outside. we go back in. we freak out about my purse. we run outside. it's still there. thank GOD.

FINALLY, he calls 37. we take our on-deck place at the counter. mom has a fleeting thought - "excuse me, mr. paint guy, we'd like to color-match this ralph lauren paint color. just curious - how much is RL paint, and how much is behr paint?"

"sorry lady, we can't color match. machine doesn't work." he goes on to inform us that RL paint is, of course, 3 times as much as behr.

he calls 38. mom holds our spot while i run frantically up and down the aisle looking for a behr or glidden chip that matches my RL chip. behr has nothing that even comes close. i grab what i think is the closest glidden match. bad decision #2. so after spending hours picking a chip out and waiting in line, i make the actual color decision in about 20 seconds, and buy 2 gallons of it in the next 20 seconds.

mom and i leave, convincing ourselves that "this color is just going to be so great." we're starving, so we meet ryan and my dad at casola's pizza. GOOD DECISION. we put off painting until saturday...

we finally get the paint process going after lunch on saturday. drop-cloths, blue tape, all that jazz. my dad starts edging, cause he's the only one who can reach the ceiling on the step-ladder. i have the roller. long story short, we paint almost the whole room. it's mid-day, and the room is flooded with daylight from our complete wall of windows. i step back and take a look. um, this is verrrrry...BLUE. "do you guys think this is bluer than we thought?..."

this sends everyone into a panic. they immediately sense that i'm not liking the color. ryan comforts me with, "i think we'll probably get lots of baby boy comments, but it's a nice color...i like it." oh, great. my brain kicks in, and i'm like "well, we just have to keep going. we already bought this paint and we're almost finished." but after looking at the walls for 10 more minutes with a sour look on my face, ryan and my parents insist that we start over and pick a color that i like.

soooooo i literally drop the roller and mom and i head to home depot again. it's now saturday around 5:00. but this time, we go to the coral gables home depot. we're the only ones in the paint section. praise the LORD. so, we go back to analyzing paint chips, quickly. i have about 0 confidence. geraldo the paint guy comes over to help, and after he runs tests on several colors and shows us the color breakdown, we leave with a sample of behr paint that is decidedly much less blue, and much more neutral.

back to the apartment to throw the sample on the wall...yes, we think it is neutral. victory! there are lots of comments about how much better it is than the last color, it's a world of difference, it's NOT baby blue, it's gonna look sooooo good...i drive back to home depot, find geraldo, buy 2 gallons of the new color, and return by 7:00. the sun is setting at the apartment...

we manage to paint the entire room, again, and finish by 11:00. we're feeling like we accomplished a lot. we arrange some of the furniture, unpack some more of the kitchen, and head to bed.

i woke up the next morning anxious to finish the main room after all of our hard work. dad and i succeed in deciding on how to best arrange the furniture (very difficult, i might add), and we get all the pillows and accessories in place, and he and ryan hang all of the pictures. i sit back, daylight now flooding the room...take a look...and decide that the walls are a very lovely shade of...

blue.

oh well. at least it's much better than the first color.