Colors

In preparation for our visit to the property, which happens next week, Kevin has given us some homework.

The trip will include meetings with a landscape designer, a kitchen and bathroom designer, and the architect, who is also an interior designer.

We have already provided enough guidance for the kitchen and bathroom designer and the landscape work hasn’t even been roughed out yet, so our assignment deals with internal elements.

door and window color choices — Windows and Doors: Middle color

Lintel stain color — Exterior Lintel Color
Click image to enlarge

The first part of our homework deals with paint and stain colors.

Confirm the color we chose last year for the (mahogany) windows and doors.
Ditto for the external lintels.
Decide how to stain the interior lintels.
Select the color for the main (chestnut) beams and cross (pine) beams.
Pick paint colors for the ground floor ceiling (the part between the beams) and the walls.

Kevin wanted us to gather some paint and stain swatches to bring as input. We went off to Home Depot to see what we could find.

It became clear right away that this not an easy task, with the stain being the main problem. Since each wood takes stain differently, we need to see actual wood pieces with the stain applied, not a brochure with color swatches. (Shockingly, there were no examples of stained European Chestnut.)

Without knowing the wood color, it is hard to make any paint choices beyond “something off-white.”

Anne also feels that choosing colors from an American source isn’t that useful. We need to see what’s really available in Italy.

So we’re pretty much an F on this assignment.

Fireplace

The other piece relates to the fireplace. This has always been a great unknown. The floorplan included a fireplace in one corner of the main room, but it has always been unclear just what fireplace shape and orientation were conceived.

The design issue is further complicated by one adjacent wall being stone, the other plaster, so how do you merge the two together via the fireplace? If we use a lot of stone is the fireplace and the wall above the fireplace, will that be too “heavy”? What if the fireplace surround is stone, but the wall above is plaster? Does that make for an awkward junction between the two walls and their different materials?

We thought maybe we could sort this out by finding a picture of a fireplace with the right design. Despite our best efforts searching the web and Pinterest, we couldn’t find a good example. We could find fireplaces with some of what we wanted, but even taken together they don’t show a clear solution.

So maybe we get a C on this part of the homework.

Next week’s meetings will be interesting. I predict we’re going to need more time for research, exploration, and discussion than Kevin has in his agenda.