The Quiet Country House

A Closet Make-Over (Or Misadventures in Decorating)

Yes, I have one of those closets. You know the kind. As someone approaches, you shout, "No, don't open that...." You are interrupted in your warning, as boxes and papers and assorted mismatched items fall upon the head of the unsuspecting victim who, seeing the rest of your fairly tidy house, thought it would be safe to open any door. This was our homeschooling closet for eight years. Though we have not been homeschooling during this past school year, I had yet to return the closet to its original purpose of linen storage.

I heard on a daytime talk show last week that paint could be tinted, in the absence of professional pigments, with unsweetened powdered drink mix. Ah-ha! I thought, I can finally paint my hall closet a lovely outrageous color that will make me smile each time I open the door (I've wanted to do that for ages!) So, on my next trip to town I bought eight or ten packets of drink mix to add to some pale pink paint that had been sitting in my basement for years (It was mixed wrong for another customer and the hardware store manager gave it to me, thinking that, with my two young daughters, three cans of pink paint might one day come in handy.)

Into the top of a can of baby pink paint, I emptied many packets of orange and red colored powder, then began to mix. I was hoping to see the paint turn from pale pink to deep, glowing apricot. A strange chemical reaction occurred, and the paint began to thicken and texturize mysteriously. Hmmm, I thought, this is not what they said would happen on daytime TV.

Back to the drawing board... well, to the stack of paint cans in the basement. I found a nice yellow paint, left over from painting the kitchen back-splash five years ago. (Are you beginning to suspect that my basement - with all of these old cans of paint - looks something like the aforementioned closet? *grin*) I grabbed another of those cans of baby pink paint and headed back to my laboratory, er, kitchen. I added some of the pink paint to the yellow and then, in a boldly creative move, poured in a whole lot of red food coloring for good measure and stirred. The result was pale peach, rather than the hoped-for glowing apricot, but pretty enough for my linen closet. I painted the closet late on Friday night, after my boys went to sleep. Then, I spent the early part of Saturday folding and stacking linens in my pretty "new" closet.

photos May 18 & 19, 2007, by Aisling 1) the closet of doom 2) powdered drink mix in pale pink paint 3) the "new" pale peach closet filled with quilts, afghans and other linens.