Tuesday, August 30, 2011

it's just paint!!!

so today . . . i agreed to have the outside of my house painted next week. while i am out of town...

i know what you are thinking. "are you insane?!?!?!" i know, i know. i clearly remember the baby boy blue room. i know that the odds that my house will be painted exactly like i want it when i am not here to make sure it is done right are probably slim. but it is either have it done that week or the week my parents are visiting. and i want to get it DONE! so i choose to trust my painter...

i was hoping to have the painting done a couple of weeks ago, but it took some time to get my colors chosen and approved. living in our city is kind of like living in a gigantic homeowner's association. you can't park your car on the street overnight--even in front of your own house. you have to take your exterior christmas decorations down by january 15th. your library card expires every couple of years and you have to go back in and prove that you still live within the city limits. your garbage cans can't be visible from the street...

...and you have to get a permit to do anything to your house. want to replace your windows with new, energy efficient ones or build a covered patio in your own backyard? you need a permit. want to rip out all your landscaping so you can redo it and make it beautiful? you need a permit (and don't even think about astroturf--i'm pretty sure they will throw you in jail for that!) you even need a permit to replace your dishwasher! in your kitchen!!!

so you can imagine that our lovely city is not going to let you paint your house just any old color. oh no, you have to choose from their palette, have it approved, and... yes, get a permit.

i logged onto the city's website to view their color palette. bland, blah earth tones with some darker colors allowed as accents. i was underwhelmed. i drove around our neighborhood and looked at houses and saw... lots of earth tones. some people clearly did not get city approval for their colors, but others were pretty creative with the limited choices on the website. i was starting to debate the merits of just painting the house whatever i wanted and then feigning ignorance if i got caught. but i hate it when people do that! the whole "ask forgiveness, not permission" thing just irritates me--i think it's arrogant--so i was determined to do the right thing and get my paint permit.

knowing that my computer didn't necessarily represent the city's colors accurately, i headed to home depot (yes, i am still mad at their carpet people, but the paint people have been good to me. so far.) the city's website said to go choose paint colors and then bring them in for approval. ok. i liked the sound of that. maybe there would be a bit of flexibility after all. i knew i wanted the body of the house to be a lovely shade of pale yellow--not too bright, not too light--just a nice, medium yellow. i did not want brown, tan, beige, terra cotta, or white. the style of our house just screams, "i am a bungalow! paint me yellow!!" of course, our house isn't a bungalow. it is a 2,367 square foot two story house. but from the front, it looks like a bungalow. i can't explain it--it is like a freak of nature (or architecture.) i was pretty sure there were some nice yellows in the city's palette, so i thought i was off to a good start...

then i needed trim colors. white, of course. how could the city argue with white. the windows have white trim. the garage door is white. surely they would let me use white. but i needed something else for some contrast. what to choose, what to choose...

i'll admit i was influenced by the ugly red painted brick on our walkway. i had asked jose' what we could do with that, and he said we could paint it. he suggested gray. ok! so all the painted brick would be charcoal gray, and then we could use a lighter gray to accent the trim. but i really, really wanted a purple door. i was pretty sure the city wouldn't let me have it, but just in case, i picked up a purple chip anyway...

i headed for city hall. after a quick stop at the sheriff's office to register our security system (they probably even have my shoe size somewhere in their files...) i went to the city planning desk. i was not the first one there. the guy ahead of me had just moved into the city and wanted to fix the hand railing on his staircase. he wanted to make it safe and bring it up to code. you would think this would be something the city would support. you would be wrong.

i listened to him go around and around with the city planner about that hand railing. because apparently if he was going to replace the hand railing, then he had to bring the whole staircase up to code, which would mean ripping the existing stairs out and rebuilding them. which would mean changing the pitch and width of the stairs. which would mean there wouldn't be room for his staircase in it's current location...

you see where this is going.

he was so frustrated. and i was starting to wonder what would happen to me if i just slowly started moving backwards toward the door. i think he was wishing he had never purchased a house in our lovely city. i was thinking just wait until he gets a parking ticket for parking in front of his own house overnight. i hid the purple paint chip in my pocket.

finally it was my turn. i started filling out my paperwork and when i got to the part where it asked for my paint colors, the city planner pulled out "the book." clearly "close" was not going to be good enough. i was going to have to use their exact colors. so i gave him my yellow. i thought that was safe. "oh," he said, "that looks pretty bright!"

were we looking at the same paint chip?!? i don't think so, because the paint chip i was looking at was barely pigmented! "well," i said, "i looked at the palette online, and there were several yellow tones. some were much darker than this." he looked at me like i had just grown fangs and horns! he flipped his book open and found a divider tab that said, "yellow." score one for me, because i am pretty sure he wouldn't need a divider tab if there was just one acceptable shade of yellow. we found one that was almost exactly the color i had in my hand. he then went to his file box, and pulled out the paint chip of the "approved" yellow that was the closest to mine and handed it to me. "what's this for?" i asked. "that is the paint color for your house. take it to the paint store and they will match it," he replied.

ok, i could see how this was going to work. close was definitely not going to be good enough.

we continued. we finally found paint colors that were acceptable to both of us. it was going so well, that i pulled out the purple paint chip. "and," i said, "i was thinking that this would be really pretty, just on the front door..." he didn't even bat an eye, he just started flipping through his book.

i had seen the palette. i knew purple was not a part of it. pretty soon he pulled out a dark reddish rust color. "how about this?" he asked.

eewww. it was not even close. i laid it down with my other colors, and said, "no, i don't think so. i guess if i can't have purple, i'll just use the gray." what i wanted to say was, "are you kidding me?!?! would you put that color on YOUR house?!?! you probably don't even live here. and if you do, you probably sign all your own paperwork..." but i didn't. it's probably not the smartest move to antagonize someone who holds the power to make you paint your house bland and trim it with boring. "ok then," he said, "all you have to do is finish filling out the paperwork."

oh boy. more paperwork. i continued filling in the blanks. and then i got to the part where it said that i would throw my body in front of a speeding train before i would paint even one small brick or stone on my house. whaaaat? NOW we were going to have a problem. because that horrendously painted red brick was not going to look good with the rest of my colors. which was not even the issue. the issue was that I HATED IT!!! there had to be a solution. i could live without a purple door if i had to, but that brick had to be painted.

at this point i was seriously considering just repainting the house in it's current colors, which would not require a permit. but the trim is pink. i am not really a pink person. it had to be changed.

i confess that i thought about lying and then just doing what i wanted to do anyway. the bureaucracy was killing me!! but i soldiered on. i told him the brick was already painted. i told him how ugly it was. i appealed to his sense of color. i tried to explain how terrible it was going to look with my new paint colors, and how all i really wanted to do was to bring the outside of my house up to the city's high standards. (hey, i can throw it around with the best of them!) finally he said, "it is already painted?" "yes," i said, "it is already painted this awful fake brick red. and it is chipping. badly! and i think the charcoal gray will make it look more natural. like stone." he looked me right in the eye. i looked right back at him, with a combination of pleading and thank you for agreeing with me in my eyes. "ok," he said, "i think i can sign off on that."

yes! success!!

and so now i have city approved paint colors. i have a paint crew scheduled. all that is left to do is to explain to the painters which colors i want painted where, and then go out of town...

i'm pretty sure this is where the trouble really begins...

2 comments:

Jes said...

where's the "yellow!"?!?! awww i would have really liked the PURPLE AND YELLOW!!!!!!!!!!! hehehhee ou just cant get away from those colors, huh!?

mom said...

Enough said about home associations. That's why I would rather put up with the mess that some have than deal with the association. My, my. Hey, I've lived my life doing the no permission, then forgiveness. I would never have gotten through all my years of teaching without it. Oh, well, to each his own. At least I raised honest children!!