What color is your castle?

I am considering officially giving up the Pursuit of the Perfect Paint Color. Somewhere out in the vast land of paint colors, I have been convinced lives a color so right, so perfect, it could just make you weep. So far, this color has eluded me, but not the weeping part.

Last year I painted our bathroom "Sailcloth," which I had thought meant "Rich Taupe" but which actually turned out to mean "Boring Beige." From the moment I rolled it on the walls, I hated this color. For a year, I have muttered against it. Everything in that room was boring beige -- the walls, the ceiling, the vanity, the tile, even the shower curtain -- and it wore on me until I couldn't stand it anymore. So I did the unthinkable. I painted it again.

Maybe this doesn't seem so strange to some of you. Consider, however, that for me, painting ranks right up there with such favored activities as removing nail fungus, and you will get a sense of how much I disliked this color to paint the room all over again.

Actually, I tried my best to find a solution that would not involve painting it again. I bought five or six new shower curtains to see if they would liven the room up. But the boring beige just sucked all the life out of every one of them. Short of, perhaps, a shower curtain filled with happy little ducks, I gradually came to the realization that a new one would not help.

So began the quest for the Perfect Paint Color, one that would guarantee my happiness and complete fulfillment, causing me to look with rapturous glow upon our wonderful little bathroom. This quest, the details of which I shall have to save for another day (or two or three or ....), was agonizingly drawn out. It was compounded by the fact that I wanted a color that could accommodate our entire towel color scheme, which at last count included five different colors. So you can see that it was a tall order. And I was sick of light colors. I wanted something deep and rich, like caramel, perhaps, or butterscotch. At last I hit upon "Tawny," which promised, from the minuscule paint chip I carried everywhere with me, to fulfill all my hopes and dreams.

I did have a twinge of doubt when I had the paint mixed up; the tiny sample dot on the top of the paint can looked awfully orange, but I shored up my courage by telling myself that anything would be better than Boring Beige.

The man at the paint store warned me that darker colors go on very light and gradually darken as they dry, so I should not, he said, um...he paused, looking for just the right words of comfort and advice.

"I shouldn't freak out?" I supplied.

"Basically, yeah," he agreed.

I didn't bother telling him that I was almost guaranteed to freak out, no matter what the color ended up looking like; that is just my nature when it comes to painting. It is a scary process of faith when one undertakes to change an entire room's look. I once took an hour to paint a register, safe in the knowledge that if I goofed up no one would see it, before feeling comfortable enough to move on to the rest of the wall. Even then, I felt a lingering conviction that I would ruin everything.

My spirits lifted when I poured the rich paint into the tray. It was a rich butterscotch color. Not quite caramel, but possibly even better.

After the first coat, Joe asked me how it was going.

"It's...orange," I told him, in a somewhat strangled voice.

He assured me, in the confident tones of one who does not have much painting experience, that it would look completely different -- presumably better -- after the second coat.

After the second coat he asked me how I liked it.

"It's not beige anymore," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "Isn't that the most important thing?"

"Well, how is it?" he asked again.

"Well, it's not exactly caramel, and it's not exactly butterscotch..." I said. "It's more, well, butternut squash. If you use your imagination a little, I suppose it could pass for pumpkin, or even cinnamon..."

But even though "Tawny" came out a little different than expected, I really do like it. I like it so much that it has fired my motivation to take up the Pursuit of the Perfect Paint Color again for the basement, which is even More Boring White. I'm thinking maybe a deep, rich, chocolate color...