in which we praise skeins of wool

Veni vidi vinci. I drained this sucker. We've now gone through ten gallons of paint. I'm not on the paint-every-room-a-different-color bandwagon. Sure, with some design sense, one can use various hues to create lovely home that really highlights the best of one's furnishings. But for the rest of the thousands of home painters out there? Um, put down that brush. Please.

Call me a conservative traditionalist boring fuddyduddy. I like soft beige walls, off-white trim, and white ceilings.

When I was on the aging side of little, I begged my mother to take down the wallpaper in my room and let me paint the walls white. My best friend had an international modern house that was as cold and white as snow. I just wanted one tiny piece of that in my room.

My mom loved wallpaper, and she loved bright wallpaper, and she loved themes in rooms. My theme was "1984." My room had wallpaper that looked like crayon drawings in bright, primary colors. The drawings were pictures of kids engaged in good deeds, and underneath the drawings, the kids had written things like "clean your room!" and "brush your teeth!" and "be nice to your sister!" This Orwellian panopticon was rivalled only by my sister's room, which was done in bright pink and ruffles.

When we renovated our house, I moved to a new room and thought I could have my stark white psych hospital look, but my mom nixed the idea. We compromised on plain, slightly textured, grey-beige wallpaper and natural low-pile carpet. My theme was "nothing."

My design ideas haven't changed. Strangely enough, the interior paint color we chose was the suggestion of my mother, who has come a long way, baby. Now that she has painted dozens of houses for her rentals, and has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of colors and themes gone haywire in her journeys as a real estate agent, she has slightly changed her aesthetic. She'll never be modern, but she has learned to choose the plainest, ugliest, simplest things for me -- she knows I'll love them. On my end of things, I have infused my dull walls and natural floors with reds and terra cottas in my fabrics and accents.

The magic paint that satisfied both of us? Sherwin-Williams color "Wool Skein" in satin finish. There's something in the paint that makes it really changeable with light -- it goes from beige to grey to almost white depending on the room and time of day. In my bedroom, it looks as if I have two different paints on adjoining walls because of the window light and shadows. Each room looks different.

Another thing that makes "Wool Skein" a lovely paint is that it matches with teal/aqua just as well as it matches with reds and oranges. It's in the green family, according to Sherwin-Williams, but it holds its own with any color. It looks great with brushed nickel and with my white and black checkered kitchen floors.

We did our trim with "Dover White," a perfectly acceptable off-white. It lacks the magic of "Wool Skein," but it's a decent color.