Lesley is baffled by shades of white

23rd November 2007 10:32

'We can't just choose any old plain white – if only it were that simple...'

If I were to tell you that I'm currently feeling under pressure, it would be a massive understatement. I can't complete a sentence without forgetting the last few words of it and trailing off. I keep finding household items in the wrong place – cream crackers in the scissor drawer, Sellotape in the fridge. I even sent poor Tilly off to her swimming lesson with her brother's trunks instead of her costume. There's only so much I can hold in my head at any one time and now my brain has reached saturation level.

In the next week, we've got to choose and order all of the interior doors, kitchen worktops, the external paving for the terraces and driveway, the interior flooring for both upstairs and down, and the Aga. I'd quite like to hide behind the sofa, waving a flag of surrender.

There's another important decision that has to be made before Christmas – what shade of white should we paint the walls with? We've decided to live in the house for a year or so to see how the light falls in each room across the seasons before we use any dramatic colours or wall coverings. But that doesn't mean we can just choose any old plain white – if only it were that simple. As any seeker of the perfect white will tell you, it can take years of trawling through paint catalogues, looking at colours with names like 'Uncle Albert's Beard White', 'Dead Stoat's Tummy White' and 'Rabid Dog Froth White' before you finally narrow it down to the final six that you can't choose between.

You then spend an absolute fortune sending off for tester pots and dab splodges on the walls in a precious way that annoys the builders, before finally coming to a conclusion six months later. Or, you go to the nearest DIY shed, buy something called 'Off White' and get a life. I can feel myself wandering off down the annoyed builder route already.

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