Well, our house is done – or at least this phase of our renovation.  (The family room windows still need to be replaced, but that will be happening at some point down the road.)  But the floors have been transformed and the walls have been repainted,  and it looks wonderful.  Truly.

But before I celebrate all of that,  I want to say a fond farewell to the walls we used to have . . .  a conglomeration of three different colors that both Kathy and I have begun referring to as the Circus Look.   First of all,  let me state for the record that it was a color scheme that we both approved; it’s not like Kathy returned from a long weekend away with her girlfriends to find that I had repainted our downstairs just to do something wild and crazy.  No. . . once upon a time, we both thought that these three colors were a great idea.

Well, no . . . When we first went with the three-color scenario,  the three colors were yellow in the foyer, light green for the kitchen,  and blue in the family room- and the combination gave our downstairs a bit of Scandinavian flavor- and it was wild enough for me but normal enough for Kathy.  In other words, it felt just right for the two of us, and it garnered us quite a few compliments.  (I hope people weren’t just being polite.)

But then came Bobbi . . .  the younger of our two golden retrievers . . . who took a puppy-ish delight in scratching and clawing at one of the foyer walls, as though she believed there were Alpo Premium Dog Treats stashed behind the drywall.  Some of the damage was done very directly, as though Bobbi regarded that wall as her own personal teething ring/ scratching post.  Still more damage was done somewhat accidentally because Bobbi loved to lay right next to that wall, and every time she stretched,  her paws would scratch away still more of the paint.  Finally, when things got a little too ugly to tolerate,  we decided to repaint the whole foyer- and enlisted a former voice student of mine to do the actual painting in lieu of rent for living with us for six weeks one summer.   But whatever sense that part of the deal made was undone by our color choice. . . “red bud” is what it said on the paint can,  but it was close to the color of Spam- or more specifically,  the color of the famous Spam Sandwiches which Elsa Windh made for the Carthage Christmas concert parties which she hosted in their home.  Interestingly enough,  we didn’t hate the color at first-  but over time came to regard it as one of the bigger mistakes we’d made  in our married life.  And in the meantime, Bobbi continued to abuse the wall just like she had as a puppy-  so clearly it had nothing to do with an aversion to the color yellow that had been there before; “red bud” attracted her claw action just as easily.  And before long,  the “Spam wall” looked like it had been on the set of the latest Transformers movie – it was that battered.  At that point,  we knew that repainting was absolutely necessary.

Fast forward to today,  and these same walls are now a beautiful, soothing combination of “frozen yogurt” and “cinnamon toast.”  The circus has left town once and for all.  Which is not to say that our new downstairs will be a Festival of Beige.   We have all kinds of colorful stuff to adorn these walls (some old and some new)  but chances are that they will have much more pop because of the more reticent, neutral background on which they’ll now be hung. I know it will be spectacular – in fact, it already is.

But there will always be this tiny sliver of me that misses the wild circus colors . . . not just because I’m a fan of bright multi-colored schemes,  but because of what was they represented.  I think on some level,  I was anxious for people to walk into our house and immediately think to themselves,  “Wow!  Somebody really creative and fearless must live here!”   I’m reminded of a neat book called My Freshman Year by Rebekah Nathan,  which is a memoir of the year she spent as a middle-aged freshman at a major university.  One of the things she observed with great interest was what sort of photos with which the typical  student would decorate their dorm room door.  You never saw photos of people in quiet, serene poses – and you especially did not see the students in idyllic scenes with their parents or grandparents.  The photos would be of the student in question in full bore party mode,  goofing around with peers,  making faces,  and just clowning around.   Rebekah Nathan came to believe that these photos were chosen very deliberately to convey a certain image – not “I’m a serious student” or “I love my family” . . . but instead  “I’m wild and crazy and cool and am incredibly fun to be with!”  And the ultimate subtext of that?  “Please be my friend.”  On some level,  I think our circus color scheme served a similar sort of purpose, as if to say to the world “Greg and Kathy Berg are cool!”  Fortunately,  I think we’re finally getting to the point where we are comfortable with our coolness- or lack thereof-  and just want to have a beautiful house where we can walk in and feel that soothing sense of home. . . and  the irreplaceable satisfaction of being surrounded by real beauty.

And by the way, when I want the world to think I’m wilder and crazier than I am,  I will leave our now gorgeous walls alone and go to the closet and break out one of my Fred Flintstone ties.

That should do it.

pictured above:  The three colors that used to be the color scheme of most of our downstairs.  (Our living room and dining room walls are still their original off-white.)   This photo makes the “red bud” color of the foyer look a little bit darker than it was- but it gives you a rough idea of its lack of subtlety,  to put it mildly.  Coming next:  a look at our new color scheme.