Hey, munchkins. Feeling…

Hey, munchkins. Feeling bright and chipper today, possibly because the apartment is nice and bright with all the lovely light from outside. It's not snowing today, hooray!

Had a pretty productive day yesterday -- did a first pass on the TOR manuscripts, organized them some more and figured out which ones I can quickly reject for being off-topic. Need to ask some people who sent synopses to send three chapters, and then spend some time today reading through the various sets of three chapters I have. Was too groggy to trust myself to do that yesterday.

I'm having a bit of a tough time deciding when to ask for full manuscripts. Many of the sets of three chapters seem competent and interesting -- is it worth asking to see the full manuscript then? Or should I only do so if I actually love the first three chapters, if I'm eager to see what comes next? After all, if I don't love the full manuscript, I'm unlikely to be able to pitch it convincingly at TOR, especially given that I have no track record with them yet. That seems right, but it would mean turning down a lot of three-chapter manuscripts with only the fuzzy, "I didn't love it" rejection. I hate that rejection.

I can tell you what I'm seeing the least of in these manuscripts, though -- any pleasure in the language. It's almost always purely functional. No high fantasy indulgence, no modern literary style tricks, just straight prose. A manuscript that came along that actually did something with language -- that was poetic, or sensuous, or in any way intense -- that would definitely give it an edge, set it apart.

Speaking of intensity, I got the first layer of color up onto my bathroom walls, a Sherman Williams Hyper Blue. It's pretty! Definitely brighter than I think I want though -- a little too modern looking. Sort of IKEA-ish in its brightness. I'm going to cover it in the next day or two with a coat of a slightly darker shade, Blueblood, and see which I like better. I'm guessing it's going to take three coats to achieve an even finish -- it's looking seriously patchy right now. Is that normal, or does that mean I didn't use enough paint?

(I'm using two different colors because I'm cheap -- I bought a quart of each initially so that I could take them home and test them, and I didn't want to waste the quart of Hyper Blue when it seemed like it'd make a decent first coat -- they're all in the same tones, just brighter and deeper.)

I am, of course, concerned that the bathroom will become too dark, though I admit, my ideal solution to that problem is not to avoid dark paint, but to bring in more light. But there's already a light above the tub and a set of six bulbs above the sink; I think it'd be a big wiring project to actually add more lights, and I've never done wiring before, and it all makes me overly nervous.

Perhaps painting the back of the bathroom door white will help.

5 thoughts on “Hey, munchkins. Feeling…”

  1. With a dark color like blue, you’re going to need at least a couple of coats to cover white. Especially in a bathroom, where (presumably) all the paint is semi-gloss, which has a more slippery surface so paint won’t grip on the first try. And it sounds like you’re not using any primer, so yeah, you’re going to have to put on a lot of paint to get it to cover well.

    Doing the second (and possibly third) coat over a different base color of blue is fine; it may get slightly different results than using all the same color, but they’ll probably be more interesting anyway. Might give the blue a bit more depth.

    Best way to keep brightness in a dark-painted room is with white trim. I don’t recall that your throom has a lot of trim, but yes, the white door will help. You’ll see how it stands out once everything else is blue.

  2. I did prime it actually, because I am virtuous. 🙂 But it is a semi-gloss, so it’s good to know that about them; I am so paint-ignorant, it’s scary.

    There’s lots of white, actually — the counter is white, as is the medicine cabinet, plus an heating vent (which I could paint blue so it’d blend into the wall more, but I’m a little scared of applying paint to it). I’m trying to decide what to do about the lowered ceiling over the (white) tub itself — Kevin thinks I should paint it blue, but I think that might make it all overwhelming. It looks wrong now, but I think that’s because it’s still in the original light cream color — if I painted it white, I think it’d work. I’m waffling.

    What do you think about picture frames? The walls go up and up, and I want to hang black and white pictures there — do I go white on the frames so they pop against the blue, or choose a deeper color that’ll blend more? Or (the cheapest option because I can get these in component form from the art store) metallic silver frames, which will be the same tones as the plumbing fixtures?

  3. I like dark rooms. But it’s nice in a bathroom to have the kind of clean feeling that white ceilings give. I’d go with a soft white, not a stark one, but any other color (cream etc) else will show up looking off in contrast to the counter if they’re the only light colors in the room. You should probably decide and paint the ceiling before you finish the walls; it’ll splatter onto them.

    Also, the harsh contrast of white ceiling and dark walls will be eased when there’s stuff hanging on the walls. If you want artwork to help lighten it up, I’d use white mats if they work with the pictures. I like dark or silver/gold frames against dark colored walls; not a big fan of white frames in general, but sometimes they’re right. Can’t really say without seeing the artwork.

    Why don’t you leave the heating vent alone for now and live with it for a while before you decide on whether to paint it? That’s something you don’t want to paint over too many times, so as a default I’d say leave it white. You can always paint it later.

  4. Come to think of it… since you’ve gone with such a dark color on the walls, the contrast is going to be pretty harsh no matter what. You might consider using a very light shade of color on the ceiling (and maybe door too), a light blue or something else entirely. There will be enough white in the counter & other bits to do that brightening thing for such a small room.

  5. I was intrigued by the idea of a different color on the door and ceiling, but Kev is scared, so we’ll stick with white. Soft white sounds good — I’ll try to pick that up today, along with a final quart of the blueblood for the walls — two coats was almost enough; it’s much less patchy, but it clearly needs a third coat.

    I hadn’t considered dark frames, but Kev liked the idea, so we tried some black frames from the hallway, and they actually look really good (working with the black tiles on the floor and tub). Cool — black frames are cheap. 🙂

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