Color Chaos

June 30, 2014

By Cheryl Katz

Someone should have said, “Do not attempt this at home.” (At least at your own home.)

But who would have thought that after two decades of practicing interior architecture and design we wouldn’t know that painting one’s house – top to bottom, every nook, cranny, and closet interior – takes, as our friend Peter says, proper prior planning. In other words, this is not something one should undertake on a whim.

Sure my husband Jeffrey and I talked often about the much needed paint job. But as is often the case with style types, the discussion was in the abstract.

Did we promise ourselves that when the time came to paint we would use it as an opportunity to purge the unused, the unwanted, the unloved? Of course we did.

Did we create palette after palette -dark and moody, airy and light, tonal and contrasting – until we got it right? You bet. We assembled enough paint grids to do Sol Lewitt proud. We poured over color chips from Farrow and Ball, Donald Kaufman, Sherwin Williams, and C2 to name just a few.

But when your contractor calls and tells you his usually impossible- to- schedule painting crew has a block of time open immediately, you think, “why not?” Tempus fugit and all that.

Suffice it to say that at week four, the painting is still going on. We are still packing and purging, trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the painters.

But the palette? That’s settled. Ben Moore OC 118.