Soothing White

I can still remember the master bedroom of a house I moved into back in the late eighties. It had woodchip wallpaper painted dusty pink with a pale pink ceiling. I remember lying in bed looking up at that ceiling and wondering why anybody would want a ceiling any colour other than crisp, light reflecting white. I'm sure there will be many that disagree with this opinion and think I am missing out on a world of decorating possibilities by limiting my colour palette, but for me there is nothing to rival a clean, white ceiling (with the possible exception of the Sistine Chapel).

This weekend, my husband laid a new floor in my en-suite bathroom. We opted for wood effect vinyl which is a massive improvement on the existing carpet that had got soggy that many times it was starting to smell. In readiness for the new flooring, I glossed all the skirting boards and painted the ceiling. The ceiling had a few small cracks so I used a basecoat that promised to not just fill the cracks but prevent them ever returning. It did a really good job of providing a perfect finish to top coat. It is only a small room and it does get somewhat steamy in there so my final job before I let my husband loose on the project was to apply Brilliant White moisture and steam resistant bathroom paint. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to get this done so I entrusted my husband to buy the paint and finish off while I took the children shopping for new outfits for a forthcoming wedding.

My husband is colour blind.

I'm not sure colour blindness is really an excuse for what he did.

Instead of Brilliant White paint, he bought Soothing White. I'm not entirely sure why it was the 'soothing' white that found its way into his shopping basket rather than any of the other romantically named shades from the 'whites with a hint of ' range or an even bigger mystery, why he didn't just buy the bog standard (and cheaper) Brilliant White that I wanted. Nevertheless, that is what happened.

I would have imagined that as soon as he opened the tin he would have realised his mistake - or if not, then surely when he began rolling it onto the pure white base coat.

If he did notice the discrepancy between his white and my white, he chose to ignore it and painted the whole thing. He didn't actually paint it very well either.

When I came home from my shopping trip I was horrified by the transformation of my flawless white  ceiling into a patchy, tinted mess. I could have cried. 

I didn't cry. I fumed a little but I didn't cry. 

As luck would have it, Soothing White is the colour my daughter has chosen to paint the bathroom in her new house so I can give the nearly full tin of paint to her and feel that it wasn't a complete waste of money.

Today, I bought the Brilliant White moisture and steam resistant paint that I wanted from the start and the Gods were smiling because the Dulux variety was half price in my local Wilkinsons.

I repainted my ceiling.

With every roll of the roller, I felt my calm return. 

I did have a bit of an "oh ****" moment when I over extended to reach a corner and inadvertently allowed the paint tray I was holding to tip up. It made a quite lovely sound as the contents of the tray splopped to the floor. Thankfully, I had covered the new vinyl properly with dust sheets which protected it from my mishap completely.

I may need a second coat to obliterate every last trace of the Soothing White, which quite frankly, did not soothe me one tiny bit! Brilliant Whiteness will soon be restored to reflect light back onto my now smelly carpet-less bathroom.