All Your Questions Answered

February 7, 2013UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, ProductMrs. Blandings

I’m following up on a few reader’s questions here so there is no need to hunt back through comments. The color of that small hall is Benjamin Moore’s Tyler Taupe. The painted chest in that piece was at Mission Road Antique Mall, but the dealer is Barbara Farmer who also has a shop, Parrin & Co., at 45th and State Line.

I did “Gracie” my dining room walls; you can see the results here.

And, how long did the powder room take? Hmmm… Painting the top part was easy – two hours, say. I spent long stretches over two days measuring the Greek key. Two to three hours? Likely. Then, the painting went pretty fast. Probably another two hours. (Notice how two hours measuring was long and two hours painting was fast? Life is like that.)

As far as effort in relation to results, I would say both the powder room and the dining room (and even painting the small hall twice) made more sense than the ridiculous amount of time I spent laying out these paint palettes for the rooms of my (still nameless) house. But it’s rainy and my eldest has been sick since Friday and I have loads of tiresome things to do, so it was a welcome diversion.

Image, top, my master bedroom paint colors, which all happen to be Benjamin Moore.

Story Time

February 4, 2013UncategorizedProductMrs. Blandings

I love magazines. Magazines have played match-maker between me and product for years and if you think it’s nothing more than an unhealthy pusher-addict relationship, well it’s not. (Though I did have a conversation with a friend recently as we both described the familiar rush of getting something good and we were flushed and animated describing the feeling as our breakfast companion looked on in dismay.)

Addictions aside, the February issue of House Beautiful sent me to the keyboard clicking last week to check out Sara Story’s line of wallpaper. It didn’t take long to email an image to Bill for our eldest’s bathroom (a nudge to a small, but stalled project.) Hatch, above, strikes just the right note and allows me to use Hadley’s Trixie for the basement bathroom alleviating my concern about wanting it for both.

Having checked a boy’s need off the list (though, honestly, he has no care of wallpaper) I clicked a little more. There is a nook in my kitchen by the backdoor. A nook that holds the pantry with its dry goods and leashes. A nook that holds the chalkboard with its invitations and schedules. A nook where there is usually a large puddle on the floor where someone has upset Rosie’s bowl and left the water to dry in the sun that comes in through the window. I often think that for a space I have to visit so regularly it could offer a little more joy. That in the midst of all of its usefulness, it could provide a lift.

What could be more charming when scrounging for cereal or clipping the lead or turning the lock than finding Story’s Kimono or Dragon? Right now I can think of nothing more delightful than these combinations of red and yellow and green.

All images used without permission, but with good intent, from Sara Story Design. The papers are available through Holland & Sherry.

We Are Winter

January 27, 2013UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

We have been getting together for dinner with three other families for a while now. There is a total of thirteen children and when they are all in attendance everyone has a friend present and there is truly nothing better than having a friend present.

It has worked out that each family’s dinner lands in a different season and we are winter. Winter is difficult for me, sun worshipper that I am, so this bit of manufactured warmth in the form of a house full of friends is nourishing.

I feel that the house is just starting to come together, is just starting to feel like mine, and a party always brings a burst of energy for the filling in. I had originally painted this hallway a light blue and it never felt right. Experimenting with colors for our bedroom doors I fell in love with this saddle-leather shade. Not right for the doors, it seemed just the thing for the hallway, a bridge between our room and Bill’s Calke Green study.

An old bench, one that had not even found a good home in the old house, held space here. The painting was my wedding present to Bill, and if it’s not something that we would buy now, it reminds me of where we were when I was so much under the influence of other people.

I had seen this chest and it kept knocking on the back door of my consciousness. Readying for the party I decided that it was, indeed a good idea. When I went to buy it, it was out on approval with someone else and, I am embarrassed to say, I had a temper tantrum. A small one, but a tantrum nonetheless. I called a friend in full froth and as I was finally winding down I said, “I mean, I get that’s it not a kidney,” though I was behaving as if it were.

I just wanted the house to be pretty. Just wanted to do a little less explaining and apologizing. Just wanted things to be right for this crew that I like so well. The shop called in the middle of one of the boy’s basketball games to say the piece had come back; it hadn’t worked for the other buyer. A few friends said, “karma.” But I am not sure this cosmic kick-back is what my bad behavior earned and I am looking over my shoulder wondering what the universe might have in store.

Patience and Process

January 23, 2013UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Mrs. B DIYMrs. Blandings

I began at the paint store in the knowledgable hands of Vic, on whom I can always count for advice and a story or two. He assured me that Benjamin Moore Regal was the way to go and he was right; it covered dense and dark in one coat.

When I told him what I was doing he looked down and nodded his head. “You know, I can paint a steady, straight line,” he looked up from under his brow and finished, “with either hand.” I smiled back, “You know, I can, too. Pretty much.”

And I did. The lines waver slightly – you can see that they were not taped. I like it better. No pretense.

I made a quick guide and started at the center of the longest wall and moved toward the door. I was intent on getting the worst out of the way, the Catholic school girl in me still so deeply embedded that I felt the need to earn satisfaction through suffering. But I succumbed. Succumbed to the creamy temptation of the paint and the soft “shush” of the brush on the wall. The marking scrambled my brain, but the painting soothed my spirit and before the small space filled with the scent of the intoxicant I realized that this was what I sought from the beginning.

In no hurry, with my focus on what was right in front of me, I took it a little at a time. There was the bother of corners and plumbing, but even those, with patience, were managed. Standing back now, with pictures and props in place, it looks as if it all worked out as it should.

#@!%&

January 22, 2013UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Mrs. B DIYMrs. Blandings

Math and measuring are a hateful and horrible business. I wonder at people who find comfort and security in numbers and order, while I am perpetually vexed. There are fifteen squares in the powder room and I did not execute the meander correctly once. Each time I had to reconnoiter the bit in the middle. Each time.

Beyond that, there are tricky parts both behind and beside the toilet and under the sink. In a perfect world, one would execute such a project free of such obstacles. It is not a perfect world. As I found myself lying on the floor wedged between the toilet and the wall maneuvering a yard stick with one hand and a pencil with another, I was reminded of an interlude in the lower berth of a bunk bed in Stillwater, Oklahoma my freshman year of college. This latest feat, at least, yielded satisfying results and left no lingering notion that looks foretell neither intelligence nor prowess.

Beyond the physical discomfort was the anxiety of making a mistake. Pencil, of course, can be erased, but inky, black paint on a flat, white wall is the sort of slip that is difficult to undo. This is where one needs to exercise forethought and caution. Regardless my focus and enthusiasm, slip I did. Today I face sealer and more dreaded calculations as I finally hang the silhouettes. At the moment, from a language perspective, it’s a bit of a PG-13 environment.