Thursday, August 29, 2013

Beware the yellow wallpaper {and pink paint}

There is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gillman called The Yellow Wallpaper

When I was in college, it was kind of a BFD to many of my English professors.  Of course, there are reasons for this... many of them slightly pretentious and all of them having to do with the fact that college courses are not regulated across the department, meaning that any professor can pick any work that he or she feels is significant and ultimately resulting in my having read it like four times in different classes.  Sidenote: I also had to write four essays on it.  Another {smarter} student might have recycled the same essay four times... no-ho, not this girl.  One night in my junior year, up late and hyped up on my fifth dose of caffeine as the dummy overachiever who had not one but two completed essays sitting in her file drawer and still trying to find a fresh take, I'm pretty sure I actually became the main character of the story for a while. 

In it's most basic form, short of all feminist-commentary, it is the tale of a woman who is locked in a room with yellow wallpaper.  The longer she is in there, the more the wallpaper starts to take on a life of its own.  And, with nothing else to do but stare at it all day, she eventually looses her marbles and goes completely crazy. 

Friends, we have our own version of this story. Except in our house, the room is pink.


Crazy, maddeningly pink.  Edgar Allen Poe pink.  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and pink.  The kind of pink that pushes sane people to do insane things and breeds serial killers P-I-N-K.


It has long been my least favorite room in the house, and it had to go. 

The trouble has been this: It will eventually be Logan's room, once he's big enough to move out of the nursery.  I didn't want to paint it to match my guest room furniture and bedding (which is green) and then have to redo it in a handful of months for a little boy. 

So it has remained insanely pink since we moved in.

Fortunately, my husband is brilliant (but let's just keep that information to ourselves, kay?) and an outside-the-box thinker.  His suggestion?  Just paint it the color it will be when Logan's ready for it and we'll make the furniture work. 

Um, duh.  Seems like an overly-logical solution - no wonder I didn't think of it. 

So here is the official unveiling of the formerly sociopathic-pink room:



TADA!!!


I am absolutely in love.  It's bright, sunny, and quickly becoming my favorite room in the house.

Since it's only temporary, we shopped our house and used existing pieces, which means that not everything matches perfectly.  The only thing that's new in this entire room are those pillows, which I purchased on clearance.  Since it will ultimately become a little boy's room, I'm not too fussed about it; it's kinda workin' for me regardless.

Oh, and yes, the inside of the closet is blue.  No, we didn't do that, we just have too many projects already in the works to worry about the color of the inside of the closet right now.  {Have you connected the dots yet?  Bright pink room + bright blue closets.  Lovely.}
 

Yes, the walls are yellow, shut up I'm familiar with the term irony.  Hopefully it won't drive anyone to madness. 


So, even though it will only stay this way for the next six months to a year...


...I'm finding it to be a pretty and comfortable space in the mean time.

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