Moving Blues

Because we have moved so many times, we have a lot of unmatched “stuff.”   Very rarely have we had the luxury of repainting and redecorating when we moved into a different house, since our moves were company-related and took us to other parts of the country.  By the time I’d decided which area would be best for us and found a house that didn’t short either of the kids, bedroom-wise, we’d usually have already sold our old home and the closing date and the moving van were  nipping at our heels.  There was never any time to do anything before moving in.

One thing I learned was that I don’t like buying ‘new’. . . too many decisions to be made at once.  I am much more tolerant of the problems in an old house than in a new one and like to live in it awhile before we make any changes.   I’m the same way about buying furniture.  New looks too…well, new!

Not surprisingly, Dearly Beloved thinks “new” and “why wait?”  The old opposites attract axiom at work!

I’m not a decorator,  I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t spend last night in a Holiday Inn Express.  I enjoy plodding along, doing my own thing.  We have more art and not-art than we can possibly ever hang again… some fairly valuable, some sentimental, and some what-were-we-thinkings.  None of them ever seem to match the next place we move.  Yeah, yeah, I know we’re supposed to buy what we love and use it everywhere, but some of the things in the attic now have lost that loving feeling.

One case in point is the print over the blue bed in the guest room in this post.   The slender girl picking up the shell reminded us of our own blond daughters and the picture was perfect in Pogo’s coral room during her teenage years.   It hasn’t matched anything since then, but it’s been hanging on an already-in-the-wall nail in the guest room all this time.  While we were putting in the blue headboard, I decided to work on the picture.

I’ve done this many times.  I dissemble it and paint the frame, the mat, or both, mixing paints, water, and/or  stain until it looks right to me.

In a previous blog I mentioned  that Dearly Beloved feels I don’t give proper weight to his opinions in decorating matters.  True, because he has about as much interest in decorating as I do about what color golf bag he should buy.  Still, he occasionally chooses to interject his decorating tastes into a project–which is how we came to have industrial strength upholstery in Christmas and autumnal colors on our den sofas.  Since I’m none too confident of my own style, I may capitulate if he feels strongly about something.  I’d much rather be the one to be able to say, “I told you so.”

When I’d had enough of the salmon frame on the beach picture, I decided to paint it blue.  I bought two bottles of blue paint and  kept mixing them until I felt it was an okay match.   I didn’t take it apart this time, so that salmon accent mat will have to wait.  I put wide blue masking tape on the glass, butting it under the frame, and started painting the frame.

I was doing this work on the kitchen counter, making a mess right in the middle of everything.   DB walked past, glanced at it  for a couple of seconds, and said, “Oh yes, that looks much better.”

It took another couple of passes for him to realize, rather sheepishly. . .

“Oh. . . that’s just the painter’s tape, isn’t it?”

Yup.