Shades of Gray

Our soon-to-be-realized floorplan.

I’m sitting in our backyard listening to the screeching whirl of a saw ripping eight inch poplar baseboards and watching tiny furled fronds push their way up through the soggy soil. I can imagine that the ferns are curling their way out of the ground as I write this.  There was no evidence of the ferns yesterday and I worried that these autumn transplants hadn’t made it through their hibernation.  It’s lovely to see green shoots in the garden after a bruising New York winter.  The various black grasses are thriving and the grape hyacinth are heavy with inky bells.  The moss that we pilfered from a nearby churchyard last September is slowly, but surely, carpeting the cracks of our salvaged slate patio.  I trust that this gray March will give way to a vibrantly green April.

Speaking of gray, I have only an hour left to agonize over the perfect shades of calming gray for our garden level bedroom, bathroom and mudroom.  I dutifully painted large samples of several shades and then couldn’t commit to a single one of those!   So now, out of time,  I’m winging it again with only the Benjamin Moore color wheel as my guide.  Each gray I sampled was either too dull or read a little too lavender in certain lights…  My perfectionism peaks when it comes to color.  The blank canvas and unlimited choices render me paralyzed. In the end, I always play paint roulette with the color wheel.  Eenie-meenie-minie-moe…

Aside from the sea of gray paint swatches in front of me, I spy green shoots everywhere in our renovation. Our talented crew and my saintly husband are humming quietly along, oblivious to my latest bout of paint paralysis.   There are richly oiled planks on a thick new subfloor, solid doors swing quietly on tight hinges and new windows, no longer etched with decades of grime, reveal a quietly growing garden.   I have to sign off now, pick some gosh-darned paint colors and go back to sanding decades of drip marks out of the beautiful, original window moldings which have also, miraculously, survived our winter of renovation.

Eenie-Meenie-Minie-Moe:

Bathroom:  Benjamin Moore  2121-30 Pewter
Bedroom:  Benjamin Moore 2121-40 Silver Half Dollar
Mudroom:  Benjamin Moore 2118-70 Heaven