Front Porch: Picking the perfect paint problematic

It’s amazing how a fresh coat of paint and updated décor improves a home’s entryway.

It’s equally amazing how challenging it can be to find the perfect color of paint.

Several years ago, my husband ripped up the brown carpet in our living room and installed beautiful hardwood floors. We chose Hazy Jade paint for the walls. The warm green offered the perfect accent to the oak floors.

We finished the project just in time for the holidays, and Derek said we’d tackle the entryway in the spring.

Spring came and went, but when a new round of holidays approached, we set off for the paint store.

We wanted something that would complement, but not detract from our Hazy Jade living room and hallway. Something off-white perhaps?

I’m here to tell you that finding a whiter shade of pale proved pretty near impossible.

We took home samples of Chantilly Lace, Dove Wing and Sea Pearl – all too white for the high walls of our split-entry doorway.

“Maybe we should go toward yellows?” I wondered.

Samples of Cornbread, Hawthorne and Philadelphia Cream came home.

None of them were right.

Finally, we settled on what promised to be a soft cream with yellow undertones.

Out came the ladder.

Derek painted the topmost edges.

“Look good?” he asked.

I hesitated.

“It’s hard to tell from down here.”

The next day Derek painted around the door and halfway down the largest wall.

Turns out, that once applied, soft cream looks more like butter. Bright, yellow, sunshiney butter.

I hated it. Derek didn’t like it either.

For the first time in our marriage, I actually asked him to NOT finish a project.

We hosted holiday gatherings with half the wall painted and the other wall primed.

Actually, we hosted several holiday gatherings that way, because Derek had moved on to other projects; a retaining wall in the backyard, window boxes for the deck, a fence-repair in progress.

This spring when Mother’s Day approached, I told him I only wanted one thing: the entryway paint job finished.

“You know you’ll have to look at paint samples, again,” he warned.

(For me, looking at paint samples ranks right up there with going to the dentist.)

I nodded. I was heartily sick of looking at half-painted yellow walls.

My husband, having had several years to think about what went wrong, said he thought we should look at more earth-toned palettes.

He was right! It only took two visits to the paint store to decide Wheat Toast would perfectly complement Hazy Jade.

Derek and our son went to pick up the paint. Unfortunately, they left the sample card with the paint name at home.

“I picked up a gallon of Burnt Toast,” Derek texted.

Thankfully, he was teasing.

The entryway was finished shortly after Father’s Day, and we are thrilled with the color. Of course, now we needed new décor to tie everything together.

A friend had recently given me a beautiful quilt, and I thought it would look lovely in the entryway. We pulled out my hanging quilt rack from the basement and back up the ladder Derek went.

The quilt was perfect.

“What are we going to hang over the door?” he asked. “How ’bout a wreath?”

I’ve heard there are husbands who aren’t interested in such things. Not mine. Derek has an artist’s eye for color and space, and he’s much handier with a hammer (and scaling scary ladders) than I’ll ever be.

For several weekends we scoured home stores, and I decided I wanted a sign with our last name under whatever wreath we found.

I knew we (actually, he) would have to make it because Hval isn’t a common last name. We sorted through bins of wooden and metal letters and discovered V is for Very, as in very hard to find.

Finally, all the pieces came together and our entryway is done. It’s warm and inviting, just the way we want our home to feel.

“We make a good team,” Derek said, as we gazed at the finished results.

I agreed.

“You know,” I said. “It’s been a long time since we painted the living room. Maybe it’s time to update that, too?”

Derek didn’t say a word, but his complexion took on a greenish hue that looked distinctly Hazy Jade.

Contact Cindy Hval at dchval@juno.com. She is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories From the Greatest Generation. Her “Front Porch” segments air Saturday mornings on Spokane Talks on FOX 28 Spokane. To see previously aired segments go to https://spokanetalksmedia.com and click on the “Front Porch” tab.