Hey.

Have you ever taken x-rite’s online color challenge?

Before you go running out my virtual blog door, hang on a sec. It’s not a “girly” thing — it’s a vision thing. Sure, girls may be better at it, but still. Aren’t you curious? There’s something about the rods and cones in the back of our eyeballs that makes it easier for women to see color. Men, it turns out, can see better in the dark. So even with the lights off, ladies, he’s still gonna see you. You may as well own it.

Anyway.

There’s this test you can take to see how well you… see. How well you see color, that is. Or hue — the various shades of color.

Not to brag or anything, but I just so happened to get a perfect score.

On the first try.

If you took the test, let me know how you did:

My *cough* perfect *cough* score would probably explain why painting our master bedroom was at the top of my to-do list when we moved into this house.

To many, mint green is probably a pretty subtle hue. Nothing to get worked up about.

But to me, it was like an explosion of toothpaste and hospital scrubs.

The walls, molding, the trim, the doors — even the window frames! — were all the same, drab mint.

And if there’s one place in your house that shouldn’t feel reminiscent of a nursing home or dental office, it’s your bedroom.

There’s not much natural light in our room, so it was really tough to get consistent photos. But basically, aside from a purging of the mint, it needed contrast. 

So, I did what any sane person would do. I taped a bunch of swatches on the wall across from the bed and refused to put out until we made a decision.

Kidding. But we were forced to stare at them every night until we I picked one. Justin was all for using darts to decide.

The unfortunate thing about hue, however, is that you can’t get a really great grasp of it until it’s up there en masse.

So I primed the walls and trim.

And then I primed the trim again.

And then I painted the trim white.

And then I painted it white again.

And then I painted it white again. And again.

That mint wasn’t going down without a fight.

All-in-all, I think it took one coat of primer, four coats of paint, six beers, three movies, and every ounce of my sanity to get the crown molding, baseboards, window and door trim looking a nice, crisp white.

Then it was time to paint the walls. We settled on Valspar’s Urban Sunrise (4004-1B).

If I was the careful type, I’d have picked up a sample pot to test it on a couple of walls first. But at that point, I just wanted the mint gone. It was haunting my dreams.

I splurged on a higher quality paint, Valspar’s 2000 series, and two coats later, I’d gone from this:

To this:

And while that may not seem like a huge difference to you, to the High Hue IQ sensitive types like me, it was the world.

No more dentist office. The white trim pops against the soft, gray walls.

The hue is a little bluer than I’d like — especially at night. And we still have a couple of issues to address. Like the old, yellowed glass fan. And the scalloped roller shades. And the fact that I still haven’t painted the window frames.

Or the doors.

And now I can really see just how mint it used to be.

And there are still just a few inconsistencies with the other finishes.

Plus, it still needs a few things, like some curtains, a rug, and I don’t know… maybe some actual color.

But I’ll get to all of that.

For now, I’d just like to rejoice in the fact that the mint is dead.

And I killed it.

And I finally get to cross off one item on the massive to-do list for updating this house.

Which makes me feel happy and catatonic at the same time.

Next up?

The kitchen.

I’m gonna need a lot of wine.

P.S. Thank you so much for your incredible responses to Friday’s post. I’m still soaking it in and turning some ideas around. If you haven’t yet, feel free to go leave a comment or answer the poll, which should be active for a few more days.