Colour my World

I finally did it!! My living room, after being the colour of split pea soup for nearly FOUR DECADES, has finally been painted!



Gone are the yogurt stains, the crayon mural my son painted for us on the front wall when my husband wasn't watching him closely enough, and, of course, the early 70's asparagus vomit hue. (for those of you who don't remember the 70's, it's the era that brought us harvest gold appliances, coke paraphenalia as personal adornment, and the Chest Thatch.) Any decade that tells us the colour of baby poo makes for good home decorating is not one I need to listen to. So, out with the old, in with the new. The new bright coral, to be exact.

See, I'm not afraid of colour, provided it's reminiscent of a Miami bordello, circa 1957. It matches our stained Toddler Couch and 2006 Crapshack Woodlike computer desk perfectly. But the best part of it isn't the paint, or even the afternoon-long high I got from the primer fumes (thank you, Kilz!), it's the fact that we can finally get rid of the godawful, slowly disintegrating Carpet from Hell.

See, the last time this house was redecorated, Nixon had yet to be a crook, Elvis was still alive for the first time, and the nation's tastemongers went through a coke-induced hallucination that olive drab short-pile wall-to-wall carpet (made solely of petroleum by-products) was the most delicious thing a thinking person could put under their feet. As visionary as this line of thought was, the miles of bile-hued Berber that covered our bungalow as a result have not held up since their inception two score years ago.



This carpet has been wasting away like the Bush Administration's approval rating. I don't need to wonder what we have underneath it, because I can see it. Carpet, pad, and webbing have worn away to dust, and our wonderful hardwood floors have been sitting there like a cruel reminder of a more stylish time.



I didn't pull it up because I've been adamant that it serve at least one purpose in its foul life: as a drop cloth. Now that the walls are no longer the colour of lime jello left out in the sun, I can rip it out by its filthy roots. And then piss on it. And set it on fire. And insult its mother.



So as soon as my pre-school induced head cold (toddlers are cute little germ factories, the lot of them!) finally leaves me some peace, I am taking a box cutter to the whole mess. This house will be party-ready, by, like, 2030 or so.