getting ready for a paint job

When we bought our house it was painted a color called "Salmón", a sort of pale peach, very Mediterranean, and the only house in town that shade. The color was very pretty, held up well to the sun, and looked "beach-y." From time to time we would have to patch and repaint and could never really match the color so the house is now several iterations of Salmón and, frankly, it looks a bit ratty. We decided it's time for a new paint job, all one color. Houses here are mostly white, but there are also blue, green, yellow, orange, turquoise . . . you name it. I want to do something different this time so I have been experimenting with various colors. I pop into the paint store, buy a litre of something, slap it on the wall and see what I think. I've now narrowed the choices to two shades of tan.

One is called Tahitian Tan (on the left), the other Cocoon. The darker color will go on all the exterior walls; the lighter color on the "interior" exterior walls. I should explain. Our house is constructed of two wings joined together by an open air terrazzo that runs the length of the house on the first and second floors. (If you look at the photo above, if you open the front door, the terrazzo  goes all the way through to the back of the house. The same is true on the second floor.  You get a view of the sea in the front, a view of the mountains in the back.) Those are the "interior" exterior walls. The darker color will be on the shell of the house; front, back, sides, the walls you see from the street.

Upstairs I want to paint one of the terrazzo walls a different color.  I chose  this violet shade. It may be a bit dark so I need to let it sit for a few days to see if it pales. This picture doesn't do the color justice; it's the shade of a nice wisteria vine.  I think it will go nicely with the interior wall color. The swatch on the right shows the color as more purple. It is a pretty good contrast with the tan shade. I'll get Fernando to paint the wall and then see how I like it. If it is too bright he'll paint over it.

Here's the painting scheme. The front of the house, above, will be the darker color, Cocoon. The back of the house will be the darker color. Both the east and west facades will be dark. Then everything else will be the lighter tan.


In the back it will all be the darker color. You can see the large opening on the second floor. It opens onto the 2nd floor terrazzo and is open all the way through to the front of the house. I guess the smartest thing would be to put up a floor plan but I don't have one. Those two small windows upstairs are for the 1/2 bath (left) and our bathroom (right).

It's going to be quite an undertaking. Fernando is due to start next Tuesday with structural repairs before painting. That means I have to go back to the paint store to put in a gigantic order which, fortunately, the owner will deliver. It will take a couple of weeks to get it all done but I think it will be quite handsome when it is finished.

Tomorrow is the opera, La Bohème from the Met at 12 o'clock our time. Patti comes at 11 for my weekly massage. I'll be right in the mood to listen to Rodolfo (the sublime Ramón Vargas) and Mimi sing their little hearts out.

19 days until 1/20/2009: End of an Error