it's all a question of balance.

Or so David Helfgott's piano professor told him when describing his playing of Rachmaninov's piano concerto in D minor.

In this case, though ... uhh, white balance. As in - for matching paint swatches.

All because of the shot I (*ahem*) Photoshopped the wall colour in I decided I would paint just that corner of my living room. Afterall - I was going to be looking at it while I worked so I might as well not stare at a boring white wall waiting for me to actually remodel this living room for real.

So I trucked up to Lowe's to blow twenty bucks on a gallon of Olympic flat paint matched to the beautiful Benjamin Moore HC-85 fairview taupe (the colour I've had picked out for the living room for at least three years). Got home and started cutting in around the window by the Bechstein.

Hmm ... it was too red. That's weird - I'd never had a problem with Lowe's matching Olympic paints to my Benjamin Moore Historic Collection swatches. But the gal that mixed the paint hadn't exuded confidence - hers or mine. And I hate to be 'that guy' but in this case (like I did for the stain I had mixed for the cedar shakes) - I opted to take it back and ask for it to be remixed.

Uh-oh - same girl. Yikes.

Well, this time I watched her go through the screens and when she got to white balance I noticed she picked 'incandescent.' I also noticed there were other options - including 'daylight.' Now the first can was too red compared to the swatch - i.e. too warm. So I asked - why incandescent when all the lights over the swatch areas were daylight-balanced (well, supposed to be was more like it - some were closer than others and every booth had a slightly different temperature but this was Lowe's afterall)? She told me that's what they had told her to do. I sorta wondered if she even knew the difference but quick tossed that aside to settling the task at hand.

OK - could you please go with daylight? I don't really care if the paint matches some incandescent colour temperature - I want it to match in the, you know, daylight. So she did. And it matched the swatch perfectly. And now I know what to ask for the next time I have Lowe's mix up paint for me.

So anyway - with nothing better to do then on a Saturday I figured why not paint that corner?

And, uhh - as long as I was at it - in my typical fashion then why not just paint, well, the rest of the walls?

And Julian - so cute and naîve asked 'so why don't you tape around all the trim?' To which I modestly replied 'taping is for amateurs' (haha).

So then ... something like five or six hours later (with the help of Katie - who meticulously painted the five window stops and a couple of patches on the baseboards where there once were lame baseboard heaters I had ripped out long ago) my living room was painted (granted, these pics were taken the following day, i.e. today and I finished with barely an ounce of paint left to spare) -

Now - since I've gone and started - I have to finish ... the fireplace. I'll re-paint the brick next, then quick throw together some paneling above that I sketched out this afternoon (using a router - I need to remember more often that I have that handy power tool - like, for mortising the doors and to fix the trim in the guest bath) -

And once that's finished - it'd be nice to get the bedroom doors swapped out with the beautiful solid fir 5-panel shakers I have waiting in the wings. Oh - and the front door.

Just like everything - some vast project started cos of one little thing ... good times.