With no crew in today, I had the opportunity to be inside the kitchen and make some decisions about paint. As Joan Crawford so memorably said on Night Gallery, “I want to see something . . . COLOR!”
It hit me, seeing all those white cabinets installed, that I was going to need to match the wall color to the cabinets. A few friends suggested that really wouldn’t be a problem, but I just can’t help remembering a bit from Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (the novel, not the beloved film version with Bogart and Bacall), when detective Philip Marlowe is assessing the décor in Vivian Regan’s boudoir: “. . . the enormous ivory drapes lay tumbled on the white carpet a yard from the windows. The white made the ivory look dirty and the ivory made the white look bled out.” I don’t want everything looking tuppence-ha’penny now, do I?
So this afternoon I moved into the kitchen with a small sheaf of paint samples, a paper cup of strong tea, a roll of Scotch tape, and Young Victoria for audio/visual wallpaper, and taped those paint samples to the inside of a cabinet door. This tends to be my method. Way back in 2016, the Final Roommate and I chose the dining room color by laying out paint samples on a large oil painting of a riverscape.
2016: dining room painting progress. The Final Roommate was a very talented interior painter.
I was not too excited about having to choose between two dozen shades of white, but the names they come up with are a delightful distraction. Minced Onion, Moonlight White, White Dove, Dove Wing, Mayonnaise, Mountain Peak White, Cotton Balls, Bavarian Cream . . . and on and on.
Not all the paint samples I looked at are visible here. As I began taping yet another to the door, suddenly I recoiled in horror. They were BEIGE! And after 19 years of mandatory beige in seven rental apartments (with and without roommates), I resolved to myself that there would be no more beige! So those got taken down and rejected right away.
Right now it’s a tossup between Cotton Balls (third column, second one down, which I had actually chosen) and Moonlight White (bottom of first column, which in the photo actually looks like it might be a closer match). AIGH!
I will use the same color for the walls in the pantry, but the window frame in there is so prominent that it will have to be black to match the cabinetry in there. After a similar process with far fewer choices, I selected Onyx.
In other news, I was able to take advantage of this weekend’s tax-exempt celebration and support local business by purchasing the exact same make and model of dishwasher ye Heaumeau Depeau had on back order from the little appliance store right on Centre Street . . . and they can deliver on Wednesday! And that is the day ye Heaumeau Depeau is delivering all the others! So let’s hear it for the little guy!
I also selected and bought severely simple curtains and rods online. That one corner by the washer dryer is going to be tricky, though, because already the cabinet door on the left can’t open all the way.
How on earth am I going to accommodate a curtain rod in that angle?