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Until a few weeks ago, I lived COLORFULLY. Now my world is alabaster.
You see, the rooms in our house had various colors on its walls in various spaces: a red wall in the living room, yellow in the kitchen and foyer, steel blue & brown in our master bathroom, purple in the club basement, teal in the workout room, blue in Hubs' office.
Might sound to you as if a rainbow vomited, yet I simply have the kind of personality that needs to be surrounded by C O L O R - and I liked giving every room a different personality. To me, the same color on all my walls is B-O-R-I-N-G.
Now our house is the color of alabaster. Upon the recommendation of my nephew/realtor, "Paint over all the color - the house will show better."
Alabaster, it seems, "is a popular, warm off-white paint color known for its soft, creamy, and balanced feel, with subtle beige undertones that prevent it from being stark."
Apparently, I had some "offensive colors" in our house (huh, too stark?) which needed to be "neutralized." Hmmm. Now I need to make potential buyers feel warm, balanced, and beige??? Hmmm.
So my cousin Jimmy (our handyman - he can do ANYTHING) has been painting for several weeks, and now my world is the boring color of alabaster. Plus, there isn't any decor left on the walls since he had to "plug up" all the nail holes, so I'm surrounded by bareness. None of my fun wall decor & artwork is hanging up to make me smile.
It feels as if I'm living in a white-walled asylum.
Where are all my COLORS??? I need to move out of this house immediately.
Actually, I didn't allow Jimmy to paint EVERY room. (I mean, c'mon, I'm not in a straight jacket yet. Plus, didn't feel like paying for THAT much labor!) My sitting room is still a pretty navy & white, our theatre room is cranberry, a small bathroom upstairs is mustard yellow, the guest room is still a pretty robin blue, and my daughter's old room is periwinkle.
Yes, I realize ... "the rainbow puked again" - I know, I know.
I didn't want to listen to Paul (Let whoever buys the house paint it the color they want, I said) because I happen to like different colors. And maybe whoever buys this giant house will like color, too. But I didn't win. I had to listen to him because he's the realtor and I'm the writer who doesn't know how to sell real estate.
So ... wa-la ... I bent to a COLORLESS world, was stripped of most of my color, and hope whoever walks thru to look at our house doesn't think, 'Oh, that Mrs. Singy ... what a BORING decorator.'
Now I look around at the monotonous white walls. (Jimmy even painted over my teal kitchen cabinet knobs to make them white ... YAWN). It all blends in and it's so ... ugh ... sigh ... dull and colorless.
Snippeteers, obviously the paint topic is a metaphor here.
Don't let anyone take away YOUR color. The "colors you are" are who you are, and no one - but NO ONE - has a right to strip them away, rob you of them, "lighten you up," turn you into a "beige" human, or tell you what they think is better for you. No one can - or should - try to neutralize you. Keep your colors.
LIVE COLORFULLY.
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