Paint, oh Paint, I Hate You.

Who knew painting a house would be such a headache?

Last week when Kevin was gone for business the painters started painting our house. Here's a before picture:

I confidently picked a tan color for the house that I thought would be nice and neutral.

However, when the new color started going up, I realized that our house would STILL look yellow as the new color had yellow under-tones. I knew this would be a huge problem as we were both trying to steer clear of yellow.

So I picked another color.

I should have stopped right there. I should have taken the time after work, with a fussy Natalie in tow right before dinnner, and picked up a quart of paint. Then I should have painted a spot myself on the side of the house in the dark that night so at least I could have seen what it was going to look like.

But I didn't do that.

No, I thought that from a 1 inch by 2 inch swatch I could tell what a color would look like on my house.

And I was wrong.

The painters weren't able to match the exact color I had picked because they were taking the already-mixed tan and trying to "make" it this new darker tan I had picked. I thought they had gotten pretty close, though, and I was confident that things were going to be better.

Hmmm.. maybe I shouldn't be so confident?

Well, Kevin got home on Friday night to a flesh-colored house. The tan I had picked had enough pinky undertones that "flesh" is probably the best word to describe it. No one in the history of man would knowingly paint his house this color and like it. Our house is 3/4 done and its the most hideous color on the face of the planet.
I spent the whole weekend completely beside myself because of this hugely expensive mistake I'd made and the humiliation of having ok'd a pink paint-job.

So now back to square one, we're thinking maybe more brown? Or more gray? We've painted both on the side of the house before we make a decision. Here are the swatches:


This is SO much harder than I thought it would be. Grrrr..