Define: Failure

Our kitchen is kind of an eyesore.  It's not really that bad, but it has a lot of issues, and the colors definitely weren't helping.

When we first got the house, my dad had some red paint already, so I thought we could just use that.  It was an okay color, nothing I was in love with, but not terrible.  When we were deciding what color to paint the cabinets, I sent Jamin to the store with a swatch, and said that I wanted something at least that dark, but a warm, rich color.  The swatch was really cool toned.  I'm not sure who didn't communicate well with who, but the color that came back was exactly the swatch color.  I wasn't happy, but I'm not one to make a big deal out of those things, so we just used it.

One of the things I didn't like about the kitchen was the tile border about halfway up the wall.  I decided we could pull them off and just put a chair rail kind of thing up instead.  In October, we started pulling the tiles off, but in the process, the drywall got damaged (whoever lived here before us was seriously obsessed with caulk.  OBSESSED.).  We really meant to take the tiles down and put the chair rail right up, but another problem was an uneven wall underneath the window.  The tilers had put a piece of wood behind the tile to solve this problem, but we didn't have a piece of wood all ready to go.

So, between the damaged wall, the uneven wall, and lack of the proper tools to cut the chair rail to the right lengths, it is now April and there is still no chair rail.  And it looks bad.

Last week Jamin and I decided we would repaint.  Neither of us loved the red, and we both agreed that the kitchen was just plain ugly.

We decided on a dark blue for the bottom half of the wall, and a light brown for the top.

Now I knew, going into this, that sometimes light brown doesn't look like brown.  The light brown we used in our living room and upstairs bathroom has this purpley/pinky hue to it that I really don't like, but have gotten used to.  As we looked at light browns, I knew to be careful of this.

We picked one out, got home, and I put a little bit on the wall, only to discover that it's pretty much bandaid pink.

You know what I'm talking about.  That brown, peach, pink, fleshy colored hue.  Gross.

Jamin thought he could live with it, I wasn't sure.  Sometimes I would look at it and think, eh, it's okay.  Other times I looked at it and all I could see was pink.  After debating for a day or two, I decided to try something else.

I grabbed a sample of Benjamin Moore paint at ACO (conveniently located next to my work), and brought it home.  I loved it.  It was the creamy, ivory color I had been picturing all along (turns out I wanted more of a yellow than a brown.).  Jamin wasn't crazy about how light it was, but he pointed out that I am a bit more picky about these things than he is, so I should do what I want.

When I went back to ACO yesterday to get a can, I realized that this paint was around $60.

$60!

I couldn't handle that price tag, especially for a redo!  I tried to match the color as well as I could in another brand, and I got really close, and got a can.

Tonight I decided to get a little bit on the wall to check.  It's a bit lighter than the other color, so I wasn't truly happy with it, but I thought it would be okay.  Then I got to looking at the wall I hadn't painted yet with the bandaid pink.  I dabbed a bit of paint on that wall.  You can't even tell.

I just bought the original paint color of the wall.

UGH.

This time I ended up with a Valspar color, and I've seen all the "love your color guarantee" commercials, so I could potentially get some money back for this can, I just need to look into it and see if it's worth the hassle.  After my third color fail in the kitchen, I'm not sure if it really is, or really isn't.