orc week 5: now we’re getting somewhere

It’s Week 5 and I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted from my emotions, I’m exhausted from sanding the shite out of a perfectly nice dresser. I’m exhausted from my brain re-thinking EVERY decision I make.

But I’m complaining. Really, I should be incredibly grateful because this roller coaster of indecision and doubt ended with me joyously crying over a skylight:

I really was… I’m not being melodramatic. I quite literally looked up and saw a gentle cloud roll past the new HOLE IN MY CEILING and thought “Good God, I am a GENIUS.” Which, if you have been watching my stories (why haven’t you if you aren’t?) you would know is quite a departure from my feelings about a week ago.

You see about a week ago, dear reader, I was literally screaming at my husband “I am in a CRISIS. Please come upstairs right now.” And when he didn’t and wanted to do something else very mundane like work or something, I think I might have said any combo of the following “How often do I use the words ‘I am in a crisis?’” and “Fuck you FOREVER.” I might be paraphrasing. I think we’ll laugh about it later in life. Anyone know any good divorce attorneys?

New Color, Who Dis?

We had installed the skylights and everything was magical. But me being me, I realized the light in the room had changed. Such a contingency had not been ignored prior to the skylights being installed but I definitely was in crunch mode. I had planned everything for a softer charcoal black Behr’s “Cheating Heart” which such a perfect color. But then with all the new light streaming in.

And then I was looking at the wallpaper I was ABOUT to install like THAT day:

Hygge and West - Daydream

I had first seen this wallpaper AGES ago when I first started, so its pattern was not new to me. It was mostly reminiscent of very southern coquettish sugar-coated interiors. Very Grey Benko, very charming. Have you been watching her new show on Magnolia, by the way?

When I received the sample in person, I was surprised at the scale of it. The birds and clouds were much bigger than I expected, which was a good thing. This room needs SCALE. But doubts started creeping in and I thought to myself “Is this pattern too played out? Is it too well-known? What am I going to do with it that’s fresh and exciting?” This is the double edged sword of Instagram.

Then I did something very inadvisable. I started going through my old samples, Pinteresting “black bedrooms”. Anything to either challenge or confirm my choices. What did they have in common? What didn’t I like? Even though I had gone through every permutation prior to this whole thing, now the stakes were really high and it was no longer a hypothetical. Painters were coming in and I needed to be absolutely fucking sure this was the right more.

Dear, dear reader. This happens to me all of the time. Not just this room. Every single room I have ever designed has me in knots. Good knots, by the way. Very enjoyable, exciting, life affirming knots. But knots nonetheless. I come up with a theme I like. It’s good. It’ll do. I’m excited about a lot of it. And then it comes time to present and I let myself go back to the beginning to confirm every choice I have made and that there isn’t some better choice.

You see, I like to challenge what I think is “good”. I have this sneaking suspicion that every time I think something is “good” it’s because I’ve seen it somewhere else. Call it the Ed-Sheeran-totally-wrote-that-but-maybe-he-listens-to-so-much-music-he-might-have-stolen-it-from-someone-else effect. So, in other words, I don’t like directly copying other people’s work but I am okay if it informs it. I want to create my own weird and twisted take on something.

So, yes, I was in crisis. Did I really like the Hygge & West Daydream wallpaper because I felt like it was an inspired choice or had I just seen it so often, it had wormholed into my brain and refused to leave?

I had to reverse engineer every decision I had made up until that point. Could the room be blue still or did I need to paint it black? Yes, it needed to be black. No other color could achieve the instant coziness and yet infinite space while also erase all the ghastly grey from the northern exposure. Was there a better black wallpaper out there? Possibly but I loved the “early American tattoo-ness” of the Hygge & West. Would it blend with the other wallpapers in the house? Let’s see!

Yeah. I think the Daydream wallpaper can hang with those. It’s like a cousin or a step-sister to those, meaning it has the same VIBE but different parentage.

So then, yes. This was the wallpaper for this room. Next, I need to decide on a suitable black. For this I chose good ole Farrow & Ball “Off Black.”

Farrow&Ball - Off-Black

The reason I chose this one over HUNDREDS of others was that it is a soft black with very little blue in it. Everything I was seeing had so much blue in it! I don’t mind blue but in a Northern facing room with lots of life, too much blue can make a girl look like a ghost.

Crisis averted? Well…

Now is the little matter of the dresser. When the room was painted all black, I took one look at the yellow and knew it had to go. I kept picturing taxi-cabs whizzing by.

So stay tuned, dear, kind, amazing readers. Are you out there? Give me a shout out. Let me know I’m not alone in the comments below :)

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