A Green Room Saga
I’m going to experiment with a Monday morning feature I’m mentally dubbing Mug Chats… basically a catch-up on recent life and / or writing events over my morning cup of coffee before I dive in to the new week. Got your cuppa?
*** Edit: I started this on Monday, but my health quickly declined and I ended up spending most of the day in bed. I’m feeling much better today (Tuesday), so that’s why the timelines on this are a bit off. ***
Blurry selfie, fresh off the camera. I don’t normally start my Mondays in my recliner, but some extremish period pain this morning has me taking it as easy on myself as I can. So the blur is an unintentional metaphor for my brain this morning, lol.
Thank you so much to those who voted on Friday’s post asking about what kind of content you’re most interested in. The results were interesting and definitely made me rethink some things. For instance, I thought Featured Authors would be of more interest than it was, but no one voted on it other than in a general “that would be interesting too” sense. Since that was one of the options that would have been the most work, it’s good to know I can take some of the pressure off myself and focus more on other stuff that would likely be not only less intense but more fun. :-)
(I’m so good at complicating things! Thanks for helping me keep it simple.)
It’s Not Easy Painting Green
For the last couple weekends and in the evenings, I’ve been working on painting my guest room.
It’s a very small room, and normally wouldn’t be a multi-weekend project. Except…
Backstory time:
When we moved into this house in 2021, my oldest, Jude, was away at Bible college, which meant, for the first time in about fifteen years, we had a “guest room” while he was gone.
We painted the room room a lovely grey that we used elsewhere in the house too. After Jude returned from college, this was “his” room until he left for the army. After he left, Noah moved into the grey room, which is much bigger than his old one. (I had originally considered making the room a guest-room-slash-office, which is why we’d arranged things as we had in the first place. By last year, though, I was quite happy with my office space in the corner of our living room, so we reconfigured things.)
Since Noah and Jabin were still in high school when we moved into this house and would be living with us for several more years, we let them each choose the colour of paint that would go on their bedroom walls. Noah’s favourite colour is green. He loves all green, but the brighter, the better. So the colour he chose for his original room (the room that is now our guest room) was bright enough to be seen from space. (Actually, we convinced him to go a shade darker than he originally wanted, because, jeepers.)
The new guest room’s original “Lizard Green” walls before Noah moved into it.
Needless to say, as soon as Noah moved rooms, we knew we would be repainting his old room, which had now graduated to guest room status.
Last snap of the Lizard Green for posterity before repainting to something less neon. (Excuse the messy bed. Tear-down had already begun.)
Two weekends ago, I decided it was time to tackle that project—partially inspired by an upcoming visit in which the room will be occupied for a solid week. While we’ve had guests stay in it already, we figured we should stop inflicting that colour on every soul who wandered through. (Fortunately, most of the time spent in a guest room is spent asleep, lol.)
I borrowed the colour deck from our local Benjamin Moore store, narrowed it down to a few, spread them out on the circa-2000 comforter we’ll be using for a while yet, and started checking the room at various times of day to see how the chips looked in different lights. (As you can probably tell, this is a very well-lit room with plenty of afternoon sun.) I also hauled Jason in there regularly to consult, and he was thrilled. 😋
Anyway, we knew we wanted something bold, which is kind of our thing, and I wanted it to feel very definitely green instead of grey (just not neon!). I’d been inspired by some lovely bold rooms on Pinterest (that were somewhat surreal AI-generated images, I’ll admit, but the colours were fantastic).
We had lots to choose from, as you can see from these fanned-out paint chip cards.
Eventually, we agreed on Juniper Green (on the bottom card). After a trip to the paint store, I got to work.
A fresh, full can of Juniper Green, at your service.
The finished look.
It went well with my shirt!
Within a week, the project was finished. On Friday, I took off the painting tape, trying to ignore my misgivings. I liked the colour, but something was tugging at me. It didn’t fit the vision I had.
My husband and I have had lots of experience choosing paint, and while we’ve had some bad mishaps in the past, we generally nail it on the first try these days. We know our tastes, and we know enough about choosing paint and how it tends to look covering an entire room that we get pretty close.
And this one was close. I kept wandering into the room, and I knew that I could make the colour work if I adjusted my vision. But… it wasn’t what I really wanted to do.
On Saturday morning, I walked out of the room for the -nth time and said to Jason, “I don’t think it’s dark enough.”
He looked up from his video game and said, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I agree.”
When my husband and I agree on something when it comes to decorating, I better not ignore it. We were surprised—first, that we agreed, and second, that we both wanted something darker!
So, we headed back to the paint store. Looking at the paint chips again, we focused our attention on the darkest options on each card. And we settled on “Garden Cucumber”.
How bold can we go?
“Garden Cucumber” in the can.
So far, I’ve only had time to cut in. But Jason and I both agree (again!) that if there’s a problem with this colour, it won’t be that it’s not dark enough!
This still-wet dark green edge on the Juniper Green wall kind of reminds me of a cut cucumber, actually…
That’s as far as the saga has gone. I’ll share updated images in future posts.
Last night (Monday night), I got the critique of Every Bell that Rings (Peace Country Romance Book 2) back from my editor. It was late by the time I was able to look at it, but I glanced through her overview, and I’m excited to start integrating her ideas later this week.
In the meantime, I’m working on a fun editing project for one of my clients myself. Thanks to my unplanned “day off” yesterday, the rest of my week looks a little squished. But it’s packed full of good things. :-)
Talk to you again soon, friend. (And if you’re waiting with bated breath for Every Bell, remember that you can pre-order it directly through me and several eBook platforms already. All links here.)
P.S. Have you had any painting adventures or misadventures? How picky are you when it comes to choosing colours? Do you love bold colours like we do, or do you prefer subtle and minimalist? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
P.P.S. Check out this Mermay eBook Giveaway on my Promos page:
Mermay Young Adult Instagram eBook Giveaway, June 11-21. Learn more.
