Castro would be at home in the bathroom

By Staff
Leada DeVaney, Hartselle Enquirer
Yellow. A nice, sunny color, perfect for brightening a dark bathroom, right?
Wrong.
Or at least that's what I found out last weekend when I made the first painting attempts at the new house.
My idea was to have a golden yellow bathroom, complete with my Indian-Asian inspired touches, straight out of "Trading Spaces." I went to the paint store and picked out an exotic color: Saffron. It was a pretty yellow and I thought, even though it was bright, the color would "tone down" on the walls. (Hint No. 1: If it's bright on the sample, it will be even brighter on the walls).
I taped off the moulding on the walls and then drafted Greg in for the painting project.
"This is really yellow," he said. "Are you sure this is what you want?"
"Yes. Bright. Colorful. Sunny. Just paint," I replied.
So we did. Rather quickly, the bathroom walls were transformed from their previously dark peach to bright yellow.
Really bright yellow. Think school buses, lemons and Tweety Bird.
"It will darken as it dries," I assured Greg, who was quick to point out the paint was still bright when you turned off the bathroom light.
It didn't darken. It seemed to intensify and glow.
Panicked and not wanting to admit failure, I acted as if this was the color I wanted all along.
"You have to use a strong color so when you put the glaze on the walls will still be colorful," I quickly said.
Greg looked at me and smiled. I think he knew the truth. (Hint No. 2 – Don't pretend you meant to paint the walls the color of a parakeet.)
I scurried off to the home improvement store, purchasing a small bottle of glaze that cost twice as much as the original paint. I went home and spent two hours coaxing, brushing and sponging the glaze on the bright yellow walls. And while they were a little paler, they were still really bright.
To make matters worse, the bright yellow on the walls did not match the shower curtain, the prints or anything else I had bought for the bathroom. This meant another trip to the store for all new items, and ended with me smuggling them in to the room and finding hiding places for the old things.
I put up the new shower curtain, hung the prints on the wall and cleaned all the specs of paint off the tile (Hint No. 3 – You can't pass drip marks off as artistic creations).
"What do you think?" I asked Greg the next day.
"It's yellow. It's really yellow. I thought you wanted Asian in here."
"Asian is old-fashioned," I replied. "We're going Cuban now."