PAINTING THE TOWN RED

Well, okay, not the town just the kitchen/dinner of Daisy Cottage.

I have long wanted to paint the kitchen/diner in Daisy Cottage some bright colour.  The height of the ceiling and size of the room allows the use of a strong colour which in a small room might swamp it.  But I believe that it is best to get used to the light fall in rooms in a house is necessary before deciding on a colour.  The house, in my opinion, 'tells' you the colour it wants.

So, I felt that red was the colour our kitchen/diner needed and taking the bull by the horns as it were I went to find the perfect red.  I thought this would have been easy but believe me, it is most certainly not.  I was seeking a bright, true red but all I could find was dulled reds, orange reds, blue reds ~ in fact every shade of red except the one I was seeking.  At one point I nearly gave in to taking a second choice but something made me hold our for my perfect red.

My perfect red!

And then I found it!  I had explained to shop keepers in the various stores I visited which red I wanted but not one could get it for me, until that is I visited the hardware store in the next village to Daisy Cottage.  At first the woman in the store was showing me cards with the reds available, in much the same way the other staff had shown me in the umpteen shops I'd visited in my quest to find the perfect red.  However, this woman said "I'll show you the 'base' colour that we use to mix reds."  And that was it.  Okay, not quite the Holy Grail, but the exact red I was seeking.  "That's it!"  (I stopped short of yelling).  A flicker of "are you joking?!" shot across her face, or maybe I imagined it.  I felt the need to say the room was large and could cope with it.  So, off I went my perfect red sitting in it's tin in the back of the car.

Back in Daisy Cottage our friend who was to help my husband with the painting of the kitchen, fell silent for a moment when the lid on the tin was removed.  I will assume it was that he was a stunned by the beauty of my perfect red and not shocked by it, although in my heart I know the latter to be the case. 

The black and white tiles set off the red perfectly

So the day was spent with all those boring jobs like 'cutting it' and so on, nothing to bother me as I most certainly was not going to be doing any painting other than on canvas.  Decorating is one of those jobs best left to men or even women who actually like doing it.  Strange, but it is the case.

During the course of the day I occasionally popped into the kitchen/diner to check the progress.  Through my fingers I took peeps, half scared in case it really was too much.  I was playing out scenes of having to tell my husband and our friend that it would have to go back to the vanilla shade it had been before.

I need not have worried ~ two coats of my perfect red in and it was just the way I had imagined.  PERFECT!

The red kitchen/diner in Daisy Cottage looks so cosy

The kitchen/diner before was lovely but the red has made it so warm and cosy and is perfectly set off by the black and white tiles on the floor and the black side by side fridge freezer and black dishwasher.  I love it!  And the bonus is that our two sets of guests since my perfect red went on love it too.

And ... it matches the baby high chair in Daisy Cottage to boot!

The red high chair for baby guests in Daisy Cottage