MOM, YOU'D LOVE MY PINK LIVING ROOM. HONEST.;

I'm not a beige person. Pink is my favorite color and my mother is still waiting in vain for me to adopt a more professional grownup favorite color. Like muted brown or beige.

Ain't gonna happen. If I wear beige I look like I've been violently ill for the last 48 hours. And don't even get me started on beige walls - I mean, this whole earth-tone thing just doesn't work for me. Why would you decorate the inside of your house with colors most often found in a compost pile?

I've gone through a red-white-and-black phase (that was in the '80s) a pure-white phase (I hope that never happens again) and an I'll-do-anything-if-I-can-put-color-on-just- one-wall phase (that's when I was married).

Strangely enough, I've never had a pink room in my house - but that changed over the Labor Day weekend.

You know how you move into a place and you know just exactly where all your furniture is going?

Convention rules: if it says on the flier from the real estate person that this is the dining room, well then that is the dining room. So that's how I moved in to my big old scary house.

Last week, I was on vacation in the Santa Barbara-area and I don't know if it was the margaritas or reading about the million dollar mansions in Santa Barbara Magazine, but I decided my dining room was in the wrong room. So I spent all Saturday moving furniture, and most of Sunday painting.

Walls that previously had the color of skim milk now glow in warm rose-color, not quite candy floss not quite boudoir but quite pretty.

The prep-work was insane. As my hard working son and I got close to painting time we were singing along with Pink Floyd: "... all and all it's just a, another hole in the wall..."

As the rosy hue spread on the walls, I asked him how he felt about a pink living room?

"It's alright," he said.

"It doesn't threaten your middle- school-masculinity?" I asked, jokingly.

"Nope," he said, laughing, "it looks just like the other room."

The other room is sage green.

The thing is that he's colorblind and as tempting as it may be, I've promised never to take advantage of that.

The only thing he wanted to know was just how pink it is.

"You'd tell me if it was ugly, wouldn't you?" he asked.

"Yup," I said. "Not only that, but I'd ask you to help me paint one more time."

Don't miss this week's cautionary tale about what can go wrong at an estate sale. Next week we're off to look at healing gardens.

Pia K. Hansen

Home editor

piah@spokesman.com

(509) 459-5427

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