True colors (I)

It's amazing what a difference the right wall color will do for a room. When we bought the house, our dining room was a lovely shade of Cheap Bordeaux with tasteful greenish gray trim. I couldn't wait to paint over that heinous mess, and in my rush I chose the *wrong* color. Yes, I replaced that horrible dark purple with an equally horrible, yet historically accurate, chalky yellow - a color that Benjamin Moore calls Concord Ivory. After a few months, I felt like I was living inside an old, hard-boiled egg, and I just couldn't take it any more. So, back to good old Benny Moore for a new shade, this time a pale green named Nantucket Green. It was certainly an improvement, but again over time it just felt wrong.

After about a year, I came to loathe that pale, pepto-like green, and decided to try one last time to get the right wall color for one of the most often-used rooms in our house. This time, I decided to go to Lowes, since I'd already wasted a bundle on Benjamin Moore, and I was inspired by a dining room I'd seen in the fall Crate and Barrel catalogue that had lovely burnt orange walls. It seems that my persistence has won out, because the resulting "copper glow" walls are exactly the right color for this room,  and they look great with the paint colors in the neighboring kitchen and living room. Plus, they kind of make you hungry when you're sitting in here, which I guess is a good characteristic for a dining room!