Sunny Sunday: Things I Love

Alright, this isn't a specific item/brand/company.........but I still want to talk about it.

We needed to paint the fun room. The fun room is a screen porch off the kitchen - a totally illegal structure tacked on by a previous owner that we have used for dining, playing, art projects, parties, and as the location of our Christmas tree. We love the room, and use it daily. When we moved in, it was painted a blue-gray, with chocolate brown floors and doors. Dark colors for a screen porch on Maui, but bearable. However. It was matte paint, so it was dull and always seemed dirty. That I couldn't live with. And it only took me 5 years to paint over it, which means I have been thinking about this for FIVE LONG YEARS.

I had no idea what color I wanted to paint the room, so it was easy to put it off. There isn't really any furniture in there, so I wasn't trying to coordinate anything. I was starting from scratch, which can be overwhelming. Numerous trips to stores to look at paint chips and color wheels did not help. I didn't have any idea what I wanted. That might be because I just didn't really care that much - I just wanted something lighter. Something with a glossier finish that I could wipe clean with a sponge. Something............not brown.

On our last trip to the paint department, I had an idea. We have done it before, when a decision couldn't be made easily, always with much celebration at the results.

I went to the "whoops" shelf.

Almost every paint department has one. Buckets of paint that were returned because the color wasn't quite what the customer wanted. Or they had bought too much. Or they didn't like the finish. Or they decided not to paint after all. Whatever the reason, the paint was already mixed. In order to get it sold, the store has marked it down to half price - or less.

Which is how I ended up walking out with 4 gallons of paint at $10 a gallon. Three were the exact same color, more than enough to paint the fun room a bright sunshine-y yellow. The guy in the paint department spotted me right away, hovering over the shelf in the back corner. He realized that I was wavering.......that I was weak........that I was definitely in the market for some whoops paint to help with my decision making.....and that he had a golden opportunity on his hands to get this paint out of the store.

And he did.

Oh boy, did he.

Now we have enough yellow paint to cover the walls of the fun room 3 times over.

I even gave a bucket to Willow for the jungle house.

Not only was the paint really cheap, it was *good* paint. It's a nice color. It has a satin finish. And choosing my color from the 2 dozen options on the whoops shelf instead of the 3000+ color options in the color chips and wheels and brochures made my decision so much easier.

And THAT is worth loving on a Sunny Sunday.