Sunday 3 June 2012

the white choice

"The first of all single colours is white ... We shall set down white for the representative of light, without which no color can be seen; yellow for the earth; green for water; blue for air; red for fire; and black for total darkness." Leonardo Da Vinci

At long last we are putting white paint on the walls... the days of decorating have finally arrived and just in time for my sanity.

It has been lovely talking through the subtleties of white with the Babes. When we were down to the final 3 white swatches on the walls Babe 2 pointed to one and immediately decided "Not that one. It looks like it's been dropped in a muddy puddle and then rinsed off" - so it was out with the grey-white, she was right.

Babe 1 pointed to the yellow-white swatch and decided "Not that one". When I asked why she replied, in that 9-going-on-10-you-have-no-idea-mum-tone "It's called Princess Bling". I still forget that overnight all things princess have gone out of style. It was obviously no reflection on the quality of the colour though as I suspect had I changed the name to One Direction Denim it would have won hands down.

postcript... I have gone with Resene Alabaster - a bit Nordic snowy landscape, a bit art gallery white - and I love it. Just love it.

Saturday 2 June 2012

light at the end of the tunnel

It's been night and day renovating these past weeks. Plastering, painting, tiling and preparing the floors for the engineered boards. We're at that point in Grand Designs when Kevin McCloud ponders "I just can't believe that they're going to get it done on time and on budget"... and the truth is, neither can we!

The Lovely One has been doing 16 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday and I work the 5 hours that the Babes are at school and then try for a 7.30-10.30pm session after they go to bed. My sweet mum has offered her services as labourer - sweeping and cleaning everything a couple of times a week (and a clean building site is so much better for our sanity... she seems to sneak in a bit of time in the laundry as well which is also so, so helpful, and of course it means the girls have clean school uniforms).

Other than the food parcels - which mum, my sister and mother in law have all delivered - we're eating pretty badly and the old house is actually now disgusting it's so dusty and full of boxes and fixtures that keep being delivered but can't yet be fitted, so they sit in the living room in more boxes.

However... we're hoping to finish Stage One (kitchen, living, dining) in 4 weeks and we can endure the mess until then. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be shining brightly enough now that it can blur out the chaos in it's glare.