Sherwin Williams Retreat (75%) it was.  With Panda White trim.  The brackets are Universal Khaki.  We’re pleased with how it came out.

Sherwin Williams Retreat Exterior, Panda White Trim and Universal Khaki Accents

In just a couple months, we went from having a hole in the ground to having a structure with WALLS (both interior and exterior) that needed paint.  So we had to decide quick.  Without any furniture.  Or flooring.  We had four interior paint colors and the exterior to decide on, and the paint would have to be Sherwin Williams.  And that’s when I found out that the internet wasn’t really helpful for visualizing paint.  Pictures that came up searching for one color were really a completely different color.  So I decided to buy some posterboard, have the top contenders color-matched in sample pots at Lowe’s, and mock up the colors, giant paint chip style.  They looked fine, more or less.  Fingers crossed that they’ll look great on the walls.

The two colors stressing me out the most were the exterior and the main interior, because they’ll be the hardest to redo ourselves.  For the exterior we wanted something cool-toned, maybe in memory of the electric blue wreck that we had to tear down, but still earthy… as befits a new eco-cottage.  For the interior we wanted a grey, but we were easily swayed by a creamy khaki and the comfort of the known (just like what we have in the place we rent now, but… ummm… darker? and greyer? yeah).

We’re going to try to go with SW Retreat on the outside and SW Wool Skein on the inside.  We’ll let you know how that goes.  The other colors I’ll go into in a future post.

in Vermont, and it’s really beautiful.  (Thank you Country Living!) She has a horse!  And a piano in her kitchen!  And many more wondrous things that I love (vegetable garden!  Josef Frank fabric!)  almost as much as I love her music.

Her work is truly my personal set of soul-shaking, life-changing ballads.  There is no song I would rather sing along to (when I’m all by myself and pretend I can really sing) more than “Deep Red Bells.” 

My friend Kyle, who shares my opinion on Neko, once told me that “Deep Red Bells” was really about a serial killer.  Which is fine by me because reading about serial killers on the internet and freaking myself out is one of my favorite hobbies.  But when it comes down to it, I can’t even watch Dexter because I get all stressed out and squeamish.  So instead I’ll be belting out “Deep Red Bells”  and appreciating Ms. Case, not only for her voice, but also this little slice of heaven.  Not to mention that she describes her decorating style as:  “a combination of science classroom, hunting lodge, and Art Nouveau battleship.” Oh wow.

Yes we have.  And it feels so good.  Should have brought the camera out yesterday, but there will be time (hopefully) before that hole in the ground turns into our home.

First impressions:

1) Seeing the footprint makes it real.

2) Seeing the footprint makes it real how (deliberately) small our house will be.  It’s hard to imagine a real house fitting into a crater that you could pole vault across.  If you happened to pole vault.  (Which I don’t, although it was a life ambition in childhood.)

3) We had to take down some trees and now were scrambling to find a creative use for the branches and stumps… some of it will definitely end up the woodstove that we added (last minute) to the plans.

x

I got home tonight to see a package on the porch.  Not just any package, but a package approximately the size of me standing up next to my door.  What could it be?! Aha! None other than the firefly pendant lamp from CB2.  By magic. When it seemed like the best idea in the world to buy this fixture last week, Jack was a voice of maddening reason.  Where would we store it?  My retort: where wouldn’t we store it?  Smoke and mirrors.  Smoke.  And mirrors.  And jazz hands … and second-grade caliber comeback… and furtive typing click click and now (miraculously) we have a five-light modern pendant, in a box the size of a grown person, hulking in the center of our townhouse.  I am ecstatic, but I’ll admit Jack was right about storage.  Why am I surprised?  Would a large fixture with five glass balls really come in a shoe box?  Not to mention that we haven’t even broken ground on the house we plan to install it in. So to the closet it will go tomorrow.  Next to/on top of/ within?  the behemoth package of Nelson bubble lamp from this spring.  

But isn’t is pretty?  It is going over the island.  Someday.

We bought a house.  A fixer-upper (or death-trap, to be precise).  Then after it was confirmed to be beyond repair, we demolished it.  Now we’re preparing for the exciting, and nerve-wracking process of building from scratch.  We will be using a builder and we’ve been working with an architect, too.  Although renovating a house was one of my big dreams, we’ve really come around to the idea of a new build– of energy efficiency, of healthy modern materials and of making it just right for us.

It won’t be flashy or big (1376 square feet, 3 bed, 2 bath) but it will be our first home.  It has taken a while to get to this point, but we are just pinching ourselves.  It seems like no time at all to be a few weeks from breaking ground.