More Color

The smell of paint is making me a little crazy, but I don't mind sitting with doors open in the cold, fog blowing in, because the upstairs landing is so beautiful! We were inspired by the color in Karen & Mark's bedroom, and for 2 years have had swatches of similar colors in 3 different spots on the walls. Finally the kitchen project propelled us into action, and we now have a fully painted room.

The color is Geranium with some meddling by our painter, so is now a new color called "Geranium II a la John Brown". It goes really well with the Eat A Peach color we have going up the staircase, "tying the whole house together," as The Dude would say. It's lovely at sunset.

How Green is My House!

Green in color, not in the sense of remodeling in a green low-impact-on-the-earth way; we've been feeling head achy from all the nasty paint fumes that made me wish we'd splurged on low VOC paints. So, I am thrilled that we are leaving the paint phase behind and entering cabinet phase!

The rooms feel so beautiful with all the nice color. Today John is packing up his paint stuff and Cam and Richard are unpacking the cabinets. This is week 4 and I love seeing the daily progress.

Here is Ethan's room, Saybrook Sage walls and Morning Dew trim:

The kitchen is Saybrook Sage walls with Greenmount Silk trim and ceiling (and the family room will be Silk walls and Sage trim). The silk looks greenish or yellowish, depending on what direction you look, and the level of light in the room.

The wall above shows Alan's wiring for stereo speakers and volume controls!

The pony wall above and the wall behind it show the Silk color which will extend into the family room.

Refrigerator inset so it will be counter depth

I See a Red Door and I Want It Painted Black

Our painter paints during the day and is a masseuse in the evenings... you just never know, eh? He's a nice guy and notices every detail, but it's a massive job, given that we let 2 teenagers loose with paintbrushes almost 2 years ago. It was a good thing at the time - they both enjoyed it quite a bit. John is starting the 2 bedrooms now before a trip to Palo Alto, and then will do the kitchen when he returns 2 weeks after that, when the cabinets are in. Here are the before pics of the bedrooms.

Demolished

The drywall is gone, the floor pulled up, and new, mysterious wonders have been revealed of course. Our carefully charted calendar is already 2 days behind schedule. It all happened while we were on our beach vacation, and while I was a little nervous about not being there, it was also very relaxing and wonderful to stop thinking about it for large periods of time. I am so lucky to have 2 wonderful families to vacation with! (Beach photos are here)

The naked kitchen looks pretty disgusting, after being enclosed for so many years, and I hate to think about what will go back to lurking there once it's all nicely sealed up again.

Several things were revealed, which in the time-honored tradition of this house, makes people who work on it scratch their head and say, "Huh."

• There was no subfloor beneath one cabinet - they had just plopped the cabinet down to cover the hole.
• There was drywall slapped on over stucco in one place (where the original outside wall had been).
• And the beams... something about, "What was holding up the roof?"

You can sort of see beams held together with nails

The plumber and electrician are set to come early this coming week, and the painter will also start on the bedrooms. We've picked out a lavender color for Marina's room with a raspberry trim, and Ethan's will be the same green as the kitchen, perhaps with a different trim.

One morning on our vacation we ventured out to buy light fixtures from Lights Beautiful in Ventura. Brian had been very helpful on our 2 previous visits to the store, so I was glad to give him our business, and he gave us the 20% contractors' discount.

And just before we left for our vacation (delayed one day because of all the moving and packing) we took advantage of a Sears 15% off day and purchased our dishwasher, range and microwave. Yay! More things to cross off the list, and fewer decisions to revisit obsessively.

The Finalists: Raisin, Sage and Silk

We couldn't find a 3rd color for the trim, so we're going to use the Saybrook Sage on the kitchen walls with Greenmount Silk as the trim, and then the opposite in the family room. Then we're going to paint the arches in Raisin Torte, which we have in the living room. It will match the arch in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. Complicated, I know, but maybe I'll get a photo up of what I mean. Or you'll just have to see it when you come to the house.

It totally looks black here, but it's really a nice deep red/burgundy sort of color. I think it will look good. If not, it's only a little bit that we'll need to paint over.

Alan met with the electrician today, first putting together a really spiffy map of where the lights will go. It reminds me of how the kids used to draw maps of their ideal houses on graph paper when they were little. Alan just kept on doing it.

I'm writing to avoid more packing and organizing.

Des Colores

For lack of anything better to mull over, we've gone over to paint colors. I wish I could figure out a way to post swatches for you to vote on. Steven says a color designer might be worth the money. He may be right, because I have to say, the longer I look at these colors the more confusing it gets - though this is true of almost all of our other decisions as well.

If you go to the Benjamin Moore website you can type in these color names and see what we're looking at. Cast your vote for the best candidate now (but don't badmouth the ones you don't like - it's bad politics).

• Saybrook Sage
• Camouflage (another word I learned how to spell today)
• Silver Sage
• Moon Shadow
• Cheyanne Green

Yet another way to share in our vision - ah it's so fun to blog! Here are some photos that people posted on Garden Web of their painted rooms, all of which we admired. It may be hard to tell about a color, given that the light, the camera, and your screen are all variables in how it looks.


Cheyanne Green 1502


Dry Sage


Moon Shadow 1516


Saybrook Sage HC 114



Silver Sage 506


Flowering Herbs

We're thinking a lighter shade in the kitchen and a little darker in the family room.
But we're waiting for our sample of countertop - Caesarstone Verde - so we can see how they look together. The counter looks a little like this (but the web version doesn't really show the green highlights that you see in person):