Mary Sadlier of Providence, R.I., had never painted a room with a cathedral ceiling before and certainly not when she was six months pregnant. Nonetheless, perched on a ladder, she gamely taped the edges of the white ceiling before she and her husband began painting the playroom walls blue. "But when we took the tape down, the white ceiling edges had blue marks all over because of my bad taping job," she says. We've all been there. We stand with a palm smacking our forehead or murmur, as one renovating friend often does, "I'm gonna need a minute alone." The material we loved in a swatch turns hideous on the sofa. The paint that looked bright yellow in the paint store morphs into hot-dog mustard on our walls. The chandelier that seemed unimposing in the showroom looks like it's landing from another galaxy. Oh well.
But here's the thing: Part of pairing decorating with ongoing sanity and fiscal solvency is learning to mask our mistakes. Sadlier's inventive husband, for instance, saw crashing waves in his wife's blue bloopers. Before long, Sadlier was tracing two-foot templates of waves in a border where ceiling met wall. And, so no one would miss the theme, she added colored fish and turtles. "Now it's the room everyone talks about," she says. "Only our real friends know it was a decorating goof." As important, Sadlier never had to paint that cathedral ceiling.
Our blunders can be the start of something beautiful--or at least the beginnings of enduring wisdom. Read on as experts and homeowners recount the mistakes they've masked, reveal the tips they've learned and share the best ways to shrug weary shoulders and move on.
Right the Wrong Floor
Terry Willitts, author of Simply SenseSational Decorating, chose white linoleum for her first kitchen floor. Then came the dirty feet. She quickly covered the floor with inexpensive sisal area rugs, easy to pick up and rinse off. And if you get a stain on sisal, buy some fabric paint and a stencil and brush on a fun pattern, says Cindy Piccoli, host of HGTV's Decorating with Style. "You can do that on linoleum too. Prime it and use special floor paint," she says. "The benefit is that you feel really clever after fixing a mistake that could have cost a lot of money and heartache."
De-fang the Botched Paint Job
Painting every room teal made one marriage teeter more than the paint ladder. But Rebecca Rahl, owner of Rebecca Rahl Interior Design in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., jumped to the rescue. "Try a faux finish of cream or gold over the teal," Rahl suggested. "Do touches of shimmering color. Or wallpaper." Of course, the best way to avoid this disaster is to test-paint first. "Pick your color plus three others around that range--a cool, a warm, a light, a bright--and paint a yard swatch on each wall," says Scott Dolphin, designer for the Lowell Hotel in New York City. "Never, ever pick color off a chip."
