Ways and Means, Tractors and Ladders..

Last May during our three weeks holidays and renovations at our old farmhouse in Prince Edward Island, we decided to clean out the top of my little barn..it was full of old straw and we wanted to empty it out through the old boarded up window..so Jim's brother lifted him up in the front loader of his tractor. It worked great. We did have ladders around but I suppose this seemed more adventurous.

In each of our three outer buildings, my little barn, hubby's much larger barn and even the garage there are two stories. So in each building is an old homemade wooden ladder to reach these second floors..I wouldn't get rid of these old ladders from by-gone years for anything, they are still very useable and a piece of history from the farm. We also found a very heavy wooden ladder hanging under the rafters in hubby's barn, painted red, in excellant condition. We have used it several times especially when it came time to take down the old eave troughs off the house..

Today my husband is up on a ladder once again but we are home in Muskoka, not out on the island. We are doing small renovations here to brighten things up. Last year we repainted the upstairs bathroom. Then my husband built a couple of new shelves for the room giving it a whole new look.

A few months ago we tackled the kitchen. I was not enjoying the bright yellow walls anymore, probably because yellow has never been a favorite wall color for me. When we bought this house the kitchen walls were almost a navy blue. So we really needed to brighten it up. Greens are a favorite of mine as the living room/dining room have been green for many years. So out I went and found a great green. We also put in a new floor to finish off the kitchen..

Of all the rooms in our house I've never had a lot of indecision about a new color except for the living/dining room. I'm not a beige person, nor white except for bathrooms nor deep, dark colors. Our rooms are not overly large so I feel pastels seem a better choice for a more open, larger feel. For the past two or three years I've brought home paint chips not finding anything that suited me.

My husband said we should look for paint on sale this past weekend so we headed off to a couple of stores. Once again I brought home a couple of paint chips and a folder from Beauti-Tone Paint..there were many folders on a rack and this one was entitled "Relaxing"..inside were pictures of rooms painted various colors and on one page a color was termed "calm"..wow, that's just what I need! I had come to the conclusion last year that perhaps grey would be the only color that might suit the living room. Who knew there were so many greys. On dull days with no sunshine the wrong kind of grey could make the room appear gloomy..so knowing this I had to be so careful what I chose.

I was prepared to wait until my girlfriend arrived on the weekend to get her opinion of one of my two choices, then the weather kept her from coming. So I got brave,  jumped in and told my husband to buy 2 gallons of what I hoped would be the "right" choice..He has completed over half the room now and it sure is a real change from the green. It's a very light color and we are going to like it quite well I believe. We are certainly committed now..In fact I want to make sure I don't lose the color folder as I might like the color in the living room of our farmhouse, once we get the new drywall up.

I certainly hope once I have to pick paint colors for all the rooms in our retirement home on the island, I won't be full of indecision. Two rooms are already decided on as I purchased new bedspreads for our bedroom and the spare bedroom, matching paint chips to them when I purchased them. My sister-in-law told me today over the phone that grey is the new "in" color this year so that cheered me up, knowing my choice is popular  at least for this year.

It's not a lot of fun having the rooms in such disarray, all the furniture pushed into the centre making space  to get at the walls, but a good way to look at all this mess could be that my spring cleaning will be done early. What is going to be harder to face is telling hubby that now we have a new wall color we should consider new curtains!