I filled the birdfeeder on my way out to the gym last night so it would be full for the little buggers at first light today. When I looked out the kitchen window at 6:45, no one was fluttering around the feeder: the thermometer stood at 0. No wonder the house felt cold.
Another reason the house is colder is that the blinds are out of the two sunroom windows. The entire thing has two coats of primer on it and the trim has one coat of glossy white. Supposedly we're painting again tomorrow, but if the forecast holds that might not happen, since we won't want to open windows.
We're not doing anything imaginative with the crown molding. None of the rest of the house has it; I'm pretty sure it was added when someone overhauled the room, removing the original breakfast nook and installing two recessed ceiling lights. The other possibility, that the whole rest of the house had it and only this room was spared, is too depressing to contemplate. It's easy enough to tell just by looking at the wood, but I haven't got up close and personal with it. Yet.
The trim, including the crown molding (which is extremely small and unsexy), will be glossy white; the ceiling flat white; and the walls a buttery yellow. Benjamin Moore doesn't have its color on its site, but the walls will be, in fact, Benjamin Moore Butter.
I had considered a whiter yellow, maybe the cream of the ceilings in the sage rooms, for the sunroom ceiling, but the sunroom should flow into the kitchen (which is between it and the sage rooms) and the kitchen will be white and blue.
So I am not overly heartbroken that the crown molding won't pop other than by being glossy. If I have regrets, they're that I'm not imaginative or bold enough to design something spectacular.
White and blue for the kitchen. It sounds fairly Dutch colonial, doesn't it? That's really not the plan, though.
The plan:
Eventually or sooner we want a hood. We (with the usual disclaimer about what "we" means in context of cooking) don't cook much in the summer because there's no fan. Which works. The other light switch is probably for that fan, currently functioning only to attract grime and spiderwebs. Maybe it's just a simple (snork) wiring problem, but a hood is a better solution than a ceiling fan.
We've gone back and forth on cabinets and countertops. If we get new counters (the extant ones are one-inch square white tiles, impossible to keep clean or roll dough on), we can't ever change the cabinet layout. If we get just new doors and hardware for the cabinets and paint their non-door parts, will that satisfy or feel like settling? If we go for entirely new cabinets in addition to new countertops, we'll have to use the kids' college fund. Or whatever.
But in the meantime, the blue and white. Blued white walls. Blue countertops. Stainless steel appliances. If new cabinets, maple. Unless those would clash with the floor. So maybe painted cabinets, either new or current.
This is the one room in the house I have no qualms about not looking Arts and Crafts. American Bungalow featured the kitchen of a madwoman, who doesn't have a dishwasher or full-sized fridge not because she doesn't believe in them but because they're not period. I recently read that the average Usan's favorite appliance is the...I don't even remember what it was, only that it wasn't dishwasher. I don't understand how anyone's favorite kitchen appliance can be other than a dishwasher.
Huh. Something must be happening, because today I am wearing the eggplant suit of legend. I wasn't able to wear it last winter or the one before. The waist is snug, but maybe it always was? It's not binding, and the skirt's not tight across the arse. No hat though, because spectacles.
RDC has lost twelve fucking pounds. Not that I'm bitter. He's a man, so he'd lose faster than I anyway, plus he particularly seems both to gain and to lose weight quickly. But he's in the high 150s now, and I was in the mid 150s when we started last month. (Or not. At my gyn exam I was 156 with clothes and all my hair; the day I bought the scale I was 153; my first weigh-in at the gym was 151.5 post hairhack.)
RDC reminds me of his more responsive basic metabolism and that I spent five days in my mother's house eating ice cream and peanut butter and her pot roast and only going for a few walks, and I roll my eyes. It's still not fair. I'm in the mid to high 140s now, though I seem to have just got stuck at one number and hang there, and I have got to keep losing the fat. It's in our marriage articles that he can never weigh less than I.