Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Brad and I have one major disagreement which has been consistent through our relationship. It has persisted even though we are both reasonable, rational people with good vocabularies and similar world-views. It has continued when approached empirically. It has even continued after our good friend, Tasha, polled her 5th grade class (who given their culinary habits are experts on this subject) and came back with a resolute answer. The disagreement: is macaroni and cheese orange, or is it yellow?

What color is macaroni and cheese - Plaster & Disaster

Image via Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (are you hungry yet?)

I’m not going to tell you which of us is on which side, because that would spoil the fun of having you weigh in in the comments. But it has proven to be an intractable problem for us.

However, it does provide an excellent hook for me to talk about a subject that I find really fascinating: how people perceive and talk about colors.

This issue has flared up in the public consciousness time and again, recently through the dress incident earlier this year. (I saw white/gold, Sage saw blue/black, in case you’re wondering.) I thought it would be fun to share a little about a book I read, recommended by my Dad, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (affiliate link – read our policies) by Guy Deutscher.

I read most of this on the train home in the evenings after a full day of work, usually exhausted and ready to veg out. Still, this book on linguistics was enthralling, mostly because of the author’s obvious enjoyment in regaling you with tales of the wild characters who studied this obscure branch of academia.

The book wasn’t entirely about color and language – instead, it was about language and the various ways that it does or does not impact culture and perception. But, while the book as a whole is an extraordinarily fun read, let me spare you the book report and instead share a bit of what I learned in the part that focused on color, which was most interesting to me as someone who is interested in writing and thinking about aesthetics.

Guy Deutscher opens by explaining how words for different colors developed in languages over time. Did you know that the language in which Homer wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad had very few descriptors for color? Further, those words that it did use grouped things together that we would consider very different colors today – honey the same color as leaves, the “wine-dark sea.” Also, in a narrative with beautiful descriptions, there was no mention of the color of the sky!

Moody Purplue Sunset by Eclectic Forest on Esty - seen on Plaster & Disaster

“Wine Dark Sea” (this beautiful photo is “Moody Purple Sunset” by EclecticForest on Etsy) (affiliate link – read about our policies)

This led some people to believe that humans actually evolved the ability to see color during recorded history, but this was not the case. Instead, languages developed these words over time. Even more interestingly, according to this book, words for color developed very predictably in each language – starting with a light/dark division, then adding the color red, then usually yellow, then green, and then finally blue.

This might seem absurd to us now, but think about it this way: if the only time you ever see yellow is in a particular flower, why would you need a word for it? Why don’t you just say “it is light like a daffodil?” And why do you need a word for blue, if you can say that something is “dark like the ocean at dusk,” and everyone knows what you mean?

Maybe that seems EVEN MORE ABSURD, so Guy offers up a thought experiment to help us see the other side of things. He asks us to imagine the future, when humans have finally created something like that food replicator from Star Trek, and can create any food we want from nowhere. But he imagines it a world even stranger:

It is by no means limited to the few “legacy fruits” that were available in the early twenty-first century. The machine can create thousands of different fruits by manipulating the taste and consistency on many different axes, such as firmness, juiciness, creaminess, airiness, sliminess, sweetness, tanginess, and many others that we don’t have precise words to describe. Press a button, and you’ll get a fruit that’s a bit like an avocado in its oily consistency, but with a taste halfway between a carrot and a mango.

Guy then asks us to imagine that an anthropologist comes to study a people much like us with a tray of 1,024 little fruit taste samples, and asks us to try them and tell us what that flavor is called, and “is astonished by the abject poverty of our fructiferous vocabulary.” Our abstract taste concepts, like “sweet” and “bitter,” are terribly crude when faced with all of these new, unnatural options.

For a while you struggle to remember, then it dawns on you that this taste is slightly similar to those wild strawberries you had in a Parisian restaurant once, only this taste seems ten times more pronounced and is blended with a few other things you can’t identify. So finally you say, very hesitantly, that “it’s a bit like wild strawberries.” … Doesn’t it feel odd and limiting, she asks, not to have a precise vocabulary to describe tastes in the region of wild strawberry? You tell her that the only things “in the region of wild strawberry” that you’ve ever tasted before were wild strawberries.

Okay, Naomi, that’s all very interesting, but what does this have to do with decorating?

Well, it doesn’t really, but I think about it a lot as I peruse paint decks and all those names we’ve invented for the colors we’ve found. We now live in a world where we manipulate color with all the mastery of our food-and-taste-replicating future selves. We ACTUALLY have access to that tray of fruit samples, only for color. This is one of the first times in history that we have needed such an intense and precise color vocabulary – and it is entirely cultural and pretty amazing.

Color comic by Doghouse Diaries - UPDATED AND REVISED by Plaster & Disaster

By Doghouse Diaries, updated to be less gendered more accurate by Plaster & Disaster

Those in the “Emily Henderson Culture” have truly immense vocabularies dedicated to discussing gray (and Ryan Gossling). Those who were YHL fans understand the importance, and danger, of grellow. Also, I am going to bet that for 95% of the people reading this, I don’t need to add any additional description for you to know just what color Revere Pewter is. (And are you as sick of it as I am?)

But what is really interesting about this book is that Guy Deutscher pushes us to think about how the words we use influence the way we think. In the end, in my opinion, the influence he finds is pretty minor. But this is really a book in which the stories and the new ways of thinking are rewarding enough.

However, when you think about it, our language for color definitely influences how we perceive colors. I doubt marsala would be the color of the year if it had the name of it’s close cousin, puce. And paint companies surely believe this is a big deal, given all the effort put into finding pleasing, evocative, association-inducing names for every shade in every paint deck.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of how much interesting stuff there is out there about this very broad topic. If you found this post interesting, rather than profoundly boring, you should totally check out Through the Language Glass (affiliate link – read our policies) and/or a few of my favorite links on related subjects:

Ridiculous paint color names – Buzzfeed
The color pink doesn’t exist?! – Today I Found Out
Color survey results – xkcd (who also adapted the Doghouse Diaries comic, with a much stronger scientific basis)
When boys wore pink – Smithsonian
More about the wine-dark sea – Clarkesworld

So, now that you know how much cultural weight is behind the question: do you think Macaroni and Cheese is orange or yellow?

(Sharing at Create Link Inspire, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Two Uses Tuesday, Create It Thursday, and Tip Me Tuesday)

Do you ever have those projects that just don’t progress, and they loom over you, undone, exuding a dim cloud of guilt over every spare moment?

That’s my garage.

Ever since we were halted by the discovery of a lot more moisture in our garage floor than expected and I completed the makeover of the old workbench that will eventually go back into the garage, I’ve been increasingly uneasy by this big, ugly project that was just languishing.

The best way to work through that guilt is obviously to make some progress. (Watching more Netflix actually doesn’t do anything about the guilt. I checked.)

While I couldn’t move forward on my major endeavors in there (i.e., the floor, the exposed ductwork, the giant holes in the walls) until I got an expert opinion, there were plenty of small things I could do that would make things easier in the long-run.

Most of these things concerned patching holes and making the garage more airtight. We have A LOT of holes.

Fixing these is a necessary step before painting to make it look halfway decent, but it is also a major goal of the project in itself. When we were buying this house, we were very concerned by how beat up it was so we did a bunch of extra tests. One of them was an air quality test, and it showed gasoline, particulates, and other unfriendly stuff in the air in our bedroom, which is right over the garage. So this was important work – even if it was not particularly glamorous or pretty.

We had four kinds of holes, which each took a different method of patching.

Mudding Ceiling Drywall Seams

Our garage ceiling is drywall, but the previous owner, in all his wisdom, only chose to seal the seams on half of it. Those are done very roughly (the drywall tape is clearly visible) but I certainly don’t care enough about meticulous attention to detail in the garage to tear them out and start over. So I turned my attention to the half that was undone.

Even here, I decided to go the easy way. Usually, edges of drywall are a bit beveled, so the tape and drywall mud can sink in a little and form a flat surface. However, our drywall was installed with rough cut edges (now hardened in place by old paint) and has a lot of nail heads that are still sticking up.

If a perfect finished surface were the goal, I would have hammered in the nails and patched over them, and gone along the edges with a razor to create a bevel. But given all the issues in this space, that would have been an utter waste of time. Instead, I decided to just seal the seams over them, and live with the slight bump that that would create.

I also would have loved to use paper tape, as I’ve read that is preferred by experts, but we had an old roll of mesh tape around and it made more sense to use what we had on hand. I also picked up a tub of pre-mixed drywall mud for $7.

I started by sticking a strip of the mesh tape over a stretch of the crack. I think it would be better to do a larger stretch at once, but our mesh tape was old and the adhesive was pretty weak.

Next, I loaded a decent amount of drywall mud on the knife.

This is a 6-inch blade, which I believe is right for this step (and, incidentally, was the only one that we had on hand).

I applied the mud in perpendicular dabs over the tape, leaving it a bit gloopy and being sure I was covering all parts of the tape.

Next, I went back over it, running the the 6-inch blade along it to smooth out the mud as best I could and remove any excess.

I did this for the full ceiling and then left it to dry overnight. (Pro tip: at this point, do not turn on a ceiling light and look at your work backlit… it will not make you feel good.)

Once it dried, I went back around and wet sanded the whole thing (which is just secret code for scrubbing a whole lot with a wet sponge.)

This step is pretty annoying. Scrubbing upward onto the ceiling gets old fast, so I did a pretty lazy job.

Next, I did one more coat of mud over the whole thing, coating everything with a thin layer and fanning it out beyond the edges onto the ceiling. Ideally you use a 12″ knife for this, but I only had the 6″ so I made do.

And one more round of wet sanding, this time with a little less laziness.

And it was done! It is not a good job as these things go, but it was great to give this a try for the first time in a spot where perfection isn’t exactly required. And it looks a whole lot better:

I mean, the space isn’t exactly finished, but it is one (very time consuming) step closer.

Patching Wall-to-Ceiling Drywall Cracks

There were also pretty large cracks between the drywall and the walls. These were either left totally bare, or “helpfully” stuffed with exposed fiberglass insulation.

To get them ready to seal, I just shoved the insulation back up into the ceiling with the head of a screwdriver, or pulled it away and tossed it (while wearing a ton of protective gear because I am ~~paranoid~~ appropriately concerned about my health).

Mesh tape can’t really be used for corners, because you can’t bend it into a sharp right angle. Ordinary paper tape can work, but given the large gaps that I had to fill along all the edges, I invested $8 in a product made specifically for corners. It is essentially paper tape that is reinforced with thin strips of metal.

Unlike the mesh tape which I could stick right onto the wall, with paper tape I started out by coating the area with drywall mud.

Then, I cut a strip of the tape to the right legnth, and creased it along the middle seam to form a nice corner.

I pressed the strip firmly in place over the mud, and smoothed out the edges and extra that seeped out.

I let this dry overnight, before coming back the next day to put a layer of mud over the edges, smoothing outward.

Again, this probably would have been better and smoother with a 12″ blade but, again, GARAGE.

And then I finished with a quick round of wet-sanding to smooth out the bumps and ridges. On the ceiling I went for a smooth finish, but I didn’t worry too much about the wall since the cement is textured, anyway.

That worked really well along most of the edges, including along the corner above the garage door where there used to be a huge chunk of insulation.

Along one edge, however, the gap was so large that the edge of the tape wouldn’t reach, so I had to find something to fill it in with. At first I was extremely pleased with myself when I found these at Home Depot:

They are strips of drywall glued together, and are used in shipping big packs of drywall sheets from place to place. They are essentially useless to the store once the shipping is done, and so they let me have them for free! I was able to break them apart into pieces 6-12″ long and then cut them to size.

However, disaster! They were too thick for my ceiling.

Okay, I guess that’s not really a big disaster in the grand scheme of things. Instead, I just improvised a patch using a non-recommended material: foam caulk backer rope.

I stuck it up there with some adhesive caulk, let it dry overnight, and then applied the drywall tape and mud right over it.

We’ll see if it holds up!

Caulking Gaps

There were also just a lot of regular old cracks and gaps around the whole place, which obviously let me go back to that staple of any home improvement project: caulk.

This is usually the part that I hate and find the most tedious, but in the garage it was actually pretty satisfying. In more livable rooms I am very careful… perhaps overly careful. I apply with a small nozzle and take a lot of care to leave it even and seamless. It takes me a long time.

However, for the garage, I caulked with wild abandon, using a nozzle that was cut twice as large as I usually use.

Patching Holes in the Garage - Sealing with Caulk - Plaster & Disaster

“Freedom lies in being bold” – Robert Frost

I went through several tubes of caulk. I sealed cracks around the beams:

Around the door frame:

Up along the ceiling:

And pretty much everywhere else. It was very liberating.

(Not.)

Patching Holes the Lazy Way

Finally, and most distressingly, we had a bunch of random holes cut into the ceiling.

Some of them even had wires sticking out of them. (At least those ostensibly had a purpose.)

If I were going for a seamless finished space, I would have properly patched it to be flush with the ceiling. But, let’s say it one last time: garage, don’t care.

Instead, I picked up a thin plywood panel from Home Depot for $7 while Sage and I were there shopping for other projects. I marked out some rectangular patches and cut them on Sage’s table saw.

Don’t you like how I just nonchalantly dropped that table saw line? Yeah, Sage taught me how to use the table saw and it was awesome.

The saw tore up the cheap material, so I gave them a quick sanding before attaching them to the ceiling using adhesive caulk (affiliate link – read our policies). This stuff is pretty powerful, but it needs to dry for 12-48 hours before it holds. Therefore, the first thing I did was add tape supports to each patch:

Then, I flipped it and added a border of adhesive caulk.

And then stuck it onto the ceiling, pressing the tape tightly to hold it up while the caulk dried.

After a couple days, I removed the tape and the patches were firmly up there. I was pretty sure that the adhesive caulk would give the airtight seal I was after for our indoor air quality, but to be sure – and to improve the look of once they are painted – I edged them all with regular caulk.

They’re certainly not gorgeous, but I’m betting once everything has a fresh coat of paint no one will look twice.

So I did all that work, and still don’t have any nice after pictures to show you! I just have slightly-less-ugly patches over previously-very-ugly-holes.

Still, it is progress! It feels so good to be moving along on this project.

Patching-Holes-in-the-Garage-After-Plaster-Disaster

Is it just me, or is this a very pretty picture? … OK, I guess it is just me.

I’ve also had the chance to talk to our extraordinary contractor who gave me some tips on the rest of this space. I’m excited to dig and and it it done!