I went ahead and hired my neighbor Sam, who used to paint houses professionally, to paint the walls of my new office.  This goes against my skinflint sensibilities but there was no way I could paint it myself with June underfoot nor could I justify taking a week off work (which is how long it would have taken me) and sending her to the babysitter while  I haphazardly slapped color on the walls.  In the end, I think I made the right decision.  I think.  I hope.  I’ll have to get back to you on that.

He’s more than  half way through, but I wanted to give a sneak peak at how it’s shaping up.  Above is a shot of one corner of the room, photographed at 9 o’clock in the morning.  Both walls are painted French Gray but as you can see, the color looks entirely different depending how much sunlight hits it.  The left faces the windows and therefore looks considerably lighter; the right is adjacent the windows and looks quite a bit darker.  Astonishing how light affects color, right?    The color will probably  look even more different by mid-day moving into evening.

Below is a photo of French Gray on Farrow & Ball’s website.

The color depicted here picks up substantially more green/yellow tones than that in my office.  I wonder if the shot above was taken under bright direct light?  I’ll be interested to know whether my French Gray picks up similar emerald tones over the course of the day.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak at the trim:  Farrow & Ball Slipper Satin.

A white this bright should give the muted French Gray a nice, crisp finish.  Stay tuned.

I took this photo about several hours ago.

That’s my car on the left getting buried in snow. It’s even deeper now.  Jake is off plowing snow for half the county and probably won’t be home until 3 a.m. this morning, so it’s just me, my wits, the dogs,  30 chickens and three wheelbarrows of firewood lined up in the basement to keep me and the baby bump warm. I don’t dare drive, which means I’ll probably be house-bound for the next couple of days. But that’s okay. Because I’m determined to tackle two big indoor projects I’ve been putting off:

• Paint the master bedroom

• Make homemade peanut butter ice-cream

Those two things sound at odds, but I lump them together because the peanut butter ice cream calls for cooking the mixture first, eggs and all, then whipping it to freeze, which sounds like a chore right up there with painting. But I’m willing to put my usual resistance aside because I’ve never had superior peanut butter ice cream and, being somewhat PB obsessed, I’m eager to find out if a homemade version is the way to go.

As for the painting, I spent months and months trying to select the perfect shade for our bedroom — one that was warm, pretty and pleasing, but not so pretty as to make Jake feel metrosexual. We ended up selecting Light Blue from Farrow & Ball. I like Farrow & Ball not only for their gorgeous palette but because their paint collection consists of only 100 colors or so. For someone as indecisive about paint as me, I appreciate having less to choose from.

I’ll post before and after pics soon.