Something hasn’t been right in the stairwell since I painted the steps.
I sat at the base of the stairs looking upwards for awhile Friday evening trying to place my angst. I was also feeling sick, and being under the weather like that sometimes make me second-guess and over-analyze my home improvement decisions. What I was seeing was nothing but overwhelming:
Believe it or not, I think I was smack-dab-in-the-middle of making the situation worse. Sure, the flowers were pretty, and I had swapped and added a few frames to the wall on the right, but I was also busy-busy-busy extending the gallery up the stairwell to the wall beside the second set of stairs. That gallery was nearing completion and reveal done. I hung this new frame that displays the baby starfish from this mid-century garage sale mounted on a paint chip:
Sick-headed, the stairwell made me feel like I was swimming in color and pattern. The original gallery colors brought in my favorite laughing and energetic oranges (you can read about my love for those paints here and here), but the stair stripes were muted shades of gold and gray, and never incorporated the more vibrant colors that were already at home in the space. It also didn’t help that the art itself wasn’t muted, so it was a boxy-bright-art/dark gold wall/muted staircase mess, which was enough to make me lay down on the couch, obsess over my color problem, and watch 7 episodes of The New Adventures Of Old Christine (of which I only have 10 more to go in the series, booyah). Patterns, squares, colors, patterns, colors, squares, ahhhh, it was becoming one of those nightmares you’re transported into when you’re on NiteQuil.
A few thoughts/solutions ran through my head during that time, like… maybe I should paint the stairs? Or the wall? Or both?
The interim solution that I decided upon during the episode where Barb gets detained as an illegal alien was to remove all of the art. No bringing up the paint rollers out of frustration, no going to Home Depot to buy the first color I saw for the stairs, no breaking all of the frames and putting them out for this morning’s trash. Dramatic much? I’m really not. Sick brain, baby. I thought up every plausible solution, but removing the frames seemed least drastic and easiest to do.
Without the art, I immediately got that gut-wrenching feeling that you get when you’re packing up your house/apartment/room to move on to a new pad. You know that feeling, I know you do. The staircase also looked barren and lonely and… wide.
What’s next? I still don’t know, but it’s going to require more paint, and if something goes back up on the stairwell wall it needs to let the stairs steal the show. I’ll find a new place for the art, and at that point I can show you some of the new framed projects I’ve been working on.
P.S. Feelin’ better, by the way. Sick brain was just Friday. The weekend was fabulous, and I hope yours was too.
2 Comments
Glad you’re feeling better! The solution for the stairs will come to you.
I totally second guess myself all the time. Currently I’m second-guessing the bedroom curtains, the bedroom wall color, the art room wall color. And I’m fighting off a cold or something. I think maybe I sometimes feel like I need to be in control of something, and deciding on new colors/curtains/art/whatever seems to make me feel better. But then curretly by the time it comes to actually changing things, I figure out another solution.
I think I do my best thinking while laying on the couch watching tv and looking at the Pinterest app.
That sounds like sicky brainstorming at it’s best. I also have the best ideas right before I go to bed, but am most ambitious after I’ve made a pot of morning coffee. YUM. Superpowers.