Saturday, January 31, 2009

Going Green: Jeff is from Mars, Jill is from Venus, and Algore* is totally nuts.


Green tea wall, take one.
A golden bright clear green color, with just a hint of olive.
Monitors vary, so in the interest of tapping in to collective color memory, the wall is the shade of the golden green you see in some variegated apples. Not that I think that description will help much either....

To me, it looked good. I could picture it balanced with the brown upholstery, and a dark green area rug that had other colors as well.
But...I also knew that the color would cause emotional discomfort to the 80% of the population that prefer blue based colors.

Blue based Bernie was OK with it.
Blue based Jeff recoiled.
Out came the color swatches again.
(The poor guy has yet to be wed; any seasoned married male knows better than to deliver negative comment on female paint choices: doing such is pretty much a guarantee of being dragged into a re-painting event. I asked the stream of married electricians, carpenters and drywallers about the color; they all delivered award winning performances of considering the wall color, and color sample #2 before solemnly voting for the color already on the wall.)

The swatch square second from the edge of the above picture is pretty close to our next attempt.

Currently the walls are paint what I would call mint green ice cream with a bit of yellow gold mixed in.

It turns out that the house has a talent for shifting color tones hourly.
I have to see each color in morning, noon, sunset and evening lamplight.
I'd swear each time that the room has been repainted a different color as the day progresses.

The current shade I have only seen in afternoon, sunset (when it went technicolor crazy green) and lamplight.
This morning we'll take another look and decide if this really is the right one.



To clear up some confusion: We will be moving into the house next weekend.
By that I mean we will be vacating our apartment, and moving our apartment furnishings into the ranch house basement.
The furnishing that graced our Houston house will remain in storage here in SLC until the upstairs of the ranch house is finished in early March.
Paying apartment rent, house mortgage and household goods storage (a sizable chunk o' change proposition) added up to a decision to rough it for a month in the incomplete house.
Pictured above: My kitchen in progress.
I'll be cooking with a camp stove and using the snow and an ice chest for refrigeration for the next four weeks.

I'll be walking around the boxes in the living room that hold my spiffy new appliances until the kitchen cabinets arrive.

We women type often show off our latest crafting project that include fancy stitching, beads, baubles and occasionally glitter (looking pointedly at Dawn here.)

In terms of household coziness, you really can't beat a nicely wired sub panel. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it doubly lovely as it is providing what is needed to run the hot tub?

Oh yes, it certainly is.
I may be without a kitchen, and only have one sink and bathroom for a month, but Saints Be Praised, at least the hot tub is bubbling merrily beneath the deck.
That and a glass of wine will smooth over any inconveniences that must be endured.
And probably will make the shade of green on the walls become completely irrelevant after all.
*RE: Algore. Check here for more information about the correct Biblical view about to "going green", which isn't exactly what Al Gore has claimed.

5 comments:

Sara at Come Away With Me said...

Ah, the fun continues....you are having an adventure. And the end result will be something quite wonderful.

Anonymous said...

As far as my monitor goes, I really, really like that green! I mean, really!

You know, we're tough women. We can endure a lot, and tough out the rough stuff...we're a hardy bunch. Stick a glass of wine in our hands, and we can envision the future, while knocking down those giants. It'll be March before you know it and you'll be loving your wonderful "new" home.

Really.

Anonymous said...

I still really like the green, at least how it looks on my monitor! I hear you about the different colors a wall takes on throughout the day - I have one wall in our dining room that bears 9 coats of paint because of that! When I asked our painter how many coats a wall can have, he replied "Until it falls down"!!!!

Looks like you are really gutting the place. We'll be gone for the month of February, so I look forward to seeing all the finished pictures when we get back in March.

Enjoy your "camping" during the next few weeks. I'll be thinking of you!

Lori T

Lovella ♥ said...

Oh Jill .. .I so can relate to your pictures. . .our reno living in the house with no kitchen for a month. . .all come back to me. . .(singing the song here)
You last paragraph. . .made me laugh. . .oh girl. . you have the best wit ever. . .
I really had a good chuckle out of Jeff's green opinion. . oh boy ..

Cristina de Prada - milliner said...

Choosing colors is always a nightmare! I remember the anguish as the day grew near when I had to have my colors decided and the paint bought.
The colors in my living room are green tea (but curiously looks nothing like yours, as you can see in my blog pictures where it always plays background to my hats), and a sort of mango red, o and Klimt yellow (whatever that is).
Having lived my whole live with white walls at my parents home I believe I will never have white walls ever again.
I see your new home coming together and I'm really happy for you!