One more reason I'm not a decorator...

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but typically I only take jobs for people I know or referrals by people who know the potential client. I want to know that when I walk into someone's house, Tamara and I are in a safe working environment. So, when I got a call a couple of weeks ago from a guy I'd never heard of, I was hesitant to meet with him. But I checked him out and I felt reasonably sure that I could work for him. Since I have a hard and fast rule about not being alone with a male who is not my husband, I dragged Tamara along to take a look at his dining room that he wanted faux finished.


Turns out he had already had a crew paint over the existing brownish red with a color called "soft glow". He saw a picture in a magazine, got the color matched at the paint store and hired some painters. When we arrived, there was 2 coats of "soft glow" on the walls. Oh who are we kidding? It's pinky-orange! And since some of the red was still visible, the overall effect was kinda like a really thin-skinned blood orange. I've painted a bunch of rooms, done my fair share of faux finishes, but I was a little nervous about pulling this one off. He wanted a metallic finish. He wanted it to be stunning and high impact. As he put it, he wanted people to walk into his dining room and say, "Dam*". (To which Tam told me later, "People are saying that now, just not in a good way".) Now, I'm fairly confident in my abilities as a faux finisher, but here was the problem. He wanted it to flow with the rest of his house, and he was dead set on keeping the orange. What's that term they use in politics? "You can put lipstick on a pig..."


After several sample boards, I think I finally got one that kept his "soft glow" (not really, but it's close) yet still flowed with the rest of the house and complimented his existing window treatments. I'm happy with the results. What I'm not happy with is my attempt to decorate his art niches. His office is near a Tuesday Morning, so I popped in there to see if I could find something to put inside the niches. I found two fireplace screens that had a Tuscan look. I bought them figuring that if he liked them he could reimburse me. I was all proud of myself. I hung them up nice and even, borrowed some greenery from other parts of the house and "staged" the room to take pictures.


When I got home, I downloaded the pictures from my camera. In my excitement, I failed to see what is so obvious after viewing the pictures. Those fireplace screens look like giant bats. Giant bats with gold medallion necklaces. Giant bats who, if they had fingers, would be wearing diamond pinky rings. I immediately emailed him and apologized for hanging them. I really should stick to painting...