The neighbor across the street said when we first painted (like 15+ years ago) he almost called the fire department (apparently it looked like the house was on fire because of the red glow ... 😀)
When I bought my fixer-upper, the last thing I thought about was whatever colors were the rooms, I just wanted to close on the deal and start working up my renovation plans... but sometime during the first daydreamy weekend up there I noticed that the kitchen had red formica countertops along the area where the sink was.
OK well I would choose to live with that since cosmetics are cosmetics and I'd just bought a place needed "minor touches" like having the floor joists chainsawed out and the house jacked up so new beams could be set in. Yeah. The price was right for a reason!
But the other thing about the kitchen was it had wallpaper. Yeah regular wallpaper like one would put in a living room. It was red too, more or less the hue of the formica counter, with gold pinstripes three inches apart and a vining floral theme in between. It made that country kitchen look more or less like I imagine what is meant by the term "Venetian bordello". And that room was where I was going to be spending a lot of time since it was over a crawl space and largely unaffected by the major demolition going on in the rest of the house for quite awhile.
So that wallpaper had to go. So I steamed that off and then there I am looking at this red formica counter. The walls, um... yellow? uh, no. White? Way too much contrast.
Okay so realizing I had to move on and after all, one can re-paint... finally I settled on pale colors, a creamy sand for the north and south walls and a very pale lavender for the end walls and a soffit that carried wires for the lighting above the sink (and that blasted countertop). Worked out great since those end walls were mostly window space or doors that took a semigloss cream trim paint, so the lavender acted as just a nice accent.
Still I had to laugh when a neighbor who stopped by said "I never liked her red wallpaper in here and this seems fresh and nice, but isn't it more like a bedroom?"
Maybe so, I thought, but not like a Venetian bordello.
