Painted into a corner

As I probably said (just checked & yes, I am repeating myself), there is a fairly inflexible

sequence to the way houses are built and renovated. Before floors and trim can go on, the place must be painted. We are now at the painting stage and it's definitely crazy-making -- not necessarily for us, but for our painter.

Back in April, I told our general contractor that we would be painting everything in a Benny Moore colour called marble white. That is no longer the case - we have gone wild with colour. Bedrooms are blue and green, the pantry is flaming red, one bathroom is a bright gold, and we are driving our painter, Ingrid Hartsink, crazy.

Bruiser takes a stroll on our new deck.

The idea of having a nice neutral background throughout was very sensible. But then I became a Benjamin Moore colour book addict. With all those choices, suddenly off-white became, well, boring! It's totally necessary in the main room, where a jumble of highly colourful paintings, persian rugs and furnishings will all have to lump along together. But those colours and their seductive names, like Greenmount Silk and Summer Harvest, did me in and now for anyone who visits it, our farmhouse is likely to deliver the visual equivalent of electroshock.      

While the painter is hard at work, our construction crew has taken off after installing doors and locks. It's not like they haven't got lots to do -- the deck must be finished off and it sure would be nice to use steps instead of a concrete block, e.g. -- but other jobs urgently need to be done before freeze up. It takes a very rainy day indeed to get them back here and working inside, instead of running around the county pouring concrete and doing framing. Next week, however, they are all ours -- our contractor is going fishing and wants them doing something simple like putting in our flooring, while he's away. 

Not a bowling alley - the deck across the back of the house.

Meantime, almost every day we conduct a tour for friends, neighbours and occasionally even perfect strangers who drop by and want to see the manse. Should start to charge! And, as the weather gets cold, the heat is on to get into the house. Note to self: phone kitchen guy and tile guy and do some creative nagging! My squeaky wheel routine is about to get underway.