A little Blue. A little Gray

Colors are funny things.  You put them in different lights, against various walls, in small dabs or in large swaths and the same color can look vastly different.   But sometimes, no matter where you put them, it's simply that the colors are different.  Entirely different.  And that's not, generally speaking, a "good thing."

 

Couple o' weeks ago we were told by our cabinet makers exactly what condition the kitchen-new needed to be in to "receive" the cabinets.  You know - - what the walls are supposed to look like, whether or not the tile floor should be installed - - ya know, the optimum shell for the installation of the crowning glory of the kitchen - the cabinets.  We were told that the first coat of paint should be on the walls. 

 

There are designers out there that possess the enviable ability to look at both a small piece of cabinetry and a small sample of paint and declare those two things matchy-matchy "PERFECT!!!"  Me?  Not so much.  So, I asked the cabinet place to send me a bigger sample of the cabinets so I could have more color real estate to work with. They did my bidding and Monday the package containing the larger sample arrived.

 

I excitedly opened the fed-ex box greatly anticipating seeing a large color sample that matched perfectly the smaller sample that we made our color choice on.  Now, you knew that this wasn't going to be the case, didn't you?  What the @#$???  What originally looked bluish gray (and was indeed bluish gray) was now some other kind of bluish gray, but a more bluish than grayish bluish gray.  If you know what I mean. It just wasn't right.

 

So I grabbed my handy-dandy cell phone, took a photo and sent it to our designer.  She agreed that they weren't the same color.  I was happy to hear it, since if she had said it was the same color, I knew I had a bigger problem.  One that might require a doctor's care.  But she agreed that they were different.  What she couldn't say was why the smaller sample had the same "graphite" label on the back, since in her observation - - it wasn't "graphite" at all.  No kidding.

 

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Keep in mind that we are 3-4 weeks from cabinet delivery.  Said cabinets are being built in Seattle.  Or should I say have already mostly BEEN built in Seattle.  The fact that they had now been constructed in a color that was different than the sample was thought to be problematic.

The good news is that George and I actually liked the color.  What we didn't like was that we had already bought tile and granite to match the graphite-of-unknown-origin.  So, we checked the now more bluish-gray against the floor tile.  Check.  No worries there.  We hopped in the car and headed down to visit our granite at the granite store.  And, thank our lucky stars - - it's still a go.  Granite looked good with the more bluish-gray than grayish-blue.  Crisis averted.

 

I did mention to our kitchen designer that perhaps a good bottle of wine wrapped in Henrybuilt t-shirts would be a nice gesture since I didn't make them rebuilt a whole boat load of grayish blue furniture.  We'll see what happens :)

 

And just for grins and giggles this...

 

 

is our loaner fridge.  Even without handles and full of dings and scratches, I am slightly in love with it.  Just having to head out to the garage for milk and OJ is a VAST improvement to having to head to the back porch and getting it out of an outdoor side-by-side.

 

In other news, Howard the Electrician, was here on Monday to do his stuff.  The upstairs electrical panel is now magically down stairs in the basement.  I would like to report that Howard did all this in a day, made sure that we mostly had electricity in the other parts of the house while he did it... and most importantly restored electricity to the parts of the house that didn't have power over the last week.  George the Older no longer looks like a homeless person going to work (he reports that shaving in the dark is dangerous) and I no longer need a flashlight to take out my contacts.  Hazzah!!

 

 

 



 

See these nice big boxes?  I call them Thing 1 and Thing 2. ...

 

 

Thing 1 on the left is our floor tile.  It arrived mysteriously in the garage on Monday.  I didn't hear it come - - but that could be a result of the loud pounding and sawing and knocking of continued deconstruction.  Thing 2 arrived on Friday late and it is George the Elder's Baby in that box.  His coveted and long awaited La Canche oven arrived.  All the way from France, via a way stop in Seattle and finally to our garage.  He is so excited that you'd think we had adopted another child or something.  He saw one of these several years ago on display at Harrods and has not-so-secretly pined away for one ever since.  His dream made reality right there in a big wooden crate.

 

As per the instructions, today I opened the crate.  Do you know that they use screws that are nearly 7 feet long to hold that thing together?  And you need to use a little ratchet thingy, not a regular screw driver.  This took me a bit to figure out.  Tried every screw head in  my wee box of electric screwdriver screw heads.  Nothing fit.  I moved on to ratchets that look like screw drivers and voila!  a fit.  But the tiny ratchet head would only fit on a tiny rachet and since I could locate an adapter to make the tiny head fit to a larger base part, I just went to town using the tiny contraption.  Then all the while I was using the tiny ratchet to unscrew the 20 seven foot long screws - -  I was thinking that I could make a fortune by inventing an electric ratchet gadget - - you know, like an electric screw driver - - but for ratchets.  With an adaptor directly attached to it to ensure there was never a problem with little heads and big heads.  I was going to make a fortune.  I told George the Elder this when I texted him a photo of his new child once I got it open about 40 minutes later.  He informed me that there already was such a thing - - and yes, of course, we own one.  Who knew?  Apparently I didn't...

I am leaving Miss La Canche just like this for now.  No dents or scratches that I can see, but I have NO INTENTION  of removing the plastic sheeting or any of the protective cardboard until they haul this big girl up to the kitchen to her final resting place.  She weighs 600 pounds and I suspect it's going to take more than a little wrangling to get her up there.  Protection will be the key.  That, and perhaps a small crane?

And so, here we are mid-week of week 2.  Steel comes on Friday and then we are good to frame.  Bring on the steel....