My evening with Ben

Sometimes you just need to get out and go heave a sledgehammer into someone’s wall. And last Wednesday night I got to do just that.

I know you’re jealous.

I’ve known Kim Moldovsky for several years, which is an eternity in blog-life. I think I first discovered her through her food blog, Scrambled Cake, then surfed on over to Hormone Colored Days. I learned we both grew up in the same town, attended the same high school, both have gifted sons, and we became friends, both online and off. This summer she and her husband bought a mid-century house and are in the process of gutting that puppy and making it livable. Thus the Reluctant Renovator was born.

As the Reluctant Renovator, Kim has met Ty Pennington, learned more than healthy about redoing a home sewer, and last week hosted Chicagoland bloggers (hey! that’s me now!) to an evening of How to Choose the Perfect Color with Benjamin Moore paints. I’m pretty sure I haven’t yet gotten into the fugly details about our new house, mainly because I’ve had a couple of kids to acclimate to the area, but our house needs work. In every room. The painting we need to do makes my head hurt, everything else is contributing to an ulcer I will ultimately name Oscar. Yes, because it’s a grouch. So an evening of meeting other women, and figuring out paint, and seeing the house Kim has been writing about for months…I needed it.

We met at a local Benjamin Moore retail store and learned how to pick colors (new to me: look at the paint chip vertically, ’cause that’s how it’s going to look on a wall. File under I Should Have Known That). A lot of it I already knew from scrapbooking for so long (think color wheel), but I did pick up a great tip. Pick the room’s paint at the time of day you’ll use it most. For a bedroom, take the paint chips (or those big honking’ paint squares) into the bedroom in the evening and see how it looks at that time of day. If you’re in the kitchen most in the morning, look at and pick the color at that time of day. This way you get the truest sense of the color, at the time of day you’ll see it most often. I’d never considered this before, but I’ll sure be thinking of it as we paint every single room of this house. Yes. Every room. As.Soon.As.Possible.

After the presentation we all trooped several blocks over to Kim’s house, where we got to see the project in action. We also got to see the paint colors they are considering and pick our faves. If you are interested in seeing what’s being considered, you can check out her posts on picking paint and even vote yourself. Three randomly chosen voters will receive gift codes for Buy2Get2Free Benjamin Moore paint samples.

But Jen! What’s this about you slamming a hammer into a wall?

Ah. Yes. Kim had several drawings that night; one lucky duck won a $100 color consultation from Benjamin Moore, a few others won some of the flocked (!) wallpaper they’d peeled off the walls. I won the right to be the first to bang holes into the wall that’s coming down next. And it.felt.awesome. I was thwarted only by the ductwork that hid behind the drywall. Hmmm…maybe I should consider a career in demolition? I think Kim may have a few pictures of me and the hammer in question going to town, so click on over for that amusing image.

All in all, I enjoyed the evening with the Reluctant Renovator and Benjamin Moore paints. I’ve never used a paint specialty store in all my years of painting walls, but I think I will as we start on the house here. I’m intrigued by their new Aura paint and want to see how it looks.

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As part of the evening with the Reluctant Renovator and Benjamin Moore paints I received a bag of literature on picking paint colors and a couple of coupons for paint samples. Some cheese and salami. Oh, a bottle of water. And got to take my frustrations out on an innocent dining room wall.