when walls attack

I'm starting to think that my wife and I aren't like most other "normal" couples. For starters, whenever we go into a store, we put lots of items into our cart, but end up talking ourselves out of buying everything by the time it's time to leave. We shop big, but hardly ever buy big...but that's another blog for another day. We don't fight over finances or money...our most passionate arguments are about paint swatches and home accessories :-/

Those of you who know us, know that we love to decorate. I'll admit it. I love to decorate. One of the coolest jobs I ever had was working in the visual department at Nordstrom. It was awesome. I'm a very visual and creative person, so naturally I want to convey that in my (now our) living space. But Colleen likes to decorate too, and being a wife she feels it's a reflection on her when things don't look good. She wants to be able to take pride in our home. So we both have a lot at stake here: my "reputation" (for lack of a better word) of being an artist and a visual guy, and Colleen being a wife and homemaker. It's very rare that we see things eye to eye at first. We may not both get exactly what we originally wanted, but the end result is a cullmination of two minds that have a far greater outcome than just one of us...except this time.

Our current them for the house is "Country Farmhouse" or "Country Chic". (Yes, it's ok to say, "Chic"...it doesn't mean you're gay--in fact this style is actually very manly. Lots of rustic appeal and destressed woods and metal, lanterns-that sort of thing) So Colleen wanted to paint a checker board in the kitchen. I added that it would be cool to have it on a 45 degree angle to break it up some. She was a little hesitant. "We could also crackle it to make it look old and aged." There was hesitation.

After a lot of talk back and forth about it, we decided to do it. It's only paint, right? So I found the 45 degree angle to work off of and we meausured out that we wanted 12" squares. Somehow our math was off (surprise!) and we ended up with 8.5" squares...that's a lot of squares. Our friends Matt and Sarah came over and suggested that we combine 9 little squares to make one big square. So we did. The end result looked like the circus was in our kitchen. Each square ended up being 25"...pretty huge for such a small wall.

So it's back to the drawing board. We have found that when we both feel right about something that it's a win. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.