This, ladies and germs, is a 42" upper kitchen cabinet - primed only, and lacking a door, but will you look at that molding.
Hello, lover.
Once upon a time, I told Lamar the Cabinet Guy, "I really want crown molding," and I waved a sample image in his face for, like, a nanosecond. It did not matter, because Lamar is THE CABINET WHISPERER. In addition to being a mind reader and, also, the bomb diggity.
This is exactly what I had in mind. And this is the molding that is going to make the rest of the crown molding in my house look sick. I will probably spend a bazillion dollars upgrading other stuff to get it remotely in the vicinity of this molding. But, right now, I don't care.
Imagine how excited I will be when there's an equally awesome door attached to this bad boy, and when everything is painted Benjamin Moore's "Refined." Isn't that a fantastic name for a paint shade? Makes you feel good about yourself for having selected it, since, you know, the paint reflects the purchaser. (Okay, I made that up.) "Refined? Well, yes, I am. Thank you so much for noticing."
I can't adequately describe "Refined." It's technically a white, I think, but it's like one of those Farrow & Ball whites that look white against darker colors but stand on their own as a color in other circumstances. I guess you could call it a gray, or a beige - or a greige. But it definitely has some green in it. Sometimes I think it's yellow. I have it painted on a board (a piece of the maple that Lamar is using for the upper cabinets) next to a swath of the color that I am going to paint the kitchen walls, and I walk around the apartment and hold the board up to different light sources. It appeals in all contexts. Although I am terrified that I will hate it when I actually have a ton of it in my kitchen, but Lamar assures me that I made a good choice. (He's a guy, so he doesn't use descriptors like "a greige with a greenish cast," but he did recognize it as "one of those whites that isn't really a white," which puts him far ahead of Spouse, who - bless his sweet little heart - only had the eight-crayon box as a child.)
Kitchen walls will be Benjamin Moore's "Wind Chime." "Wind Chime" is one of those paint names that sounds pretty but isn't particularly descriptive. I'll cut to the chase: it's a cloudy pale green with some aqua in it, to harmonize with the adjacent dining room, which is a cloudy pale aqua with some green in it. I am terrified that when I go in to buy the paint, or send someone to do it, I will slip up and request "Tea Leaf," which is a similar color that I have decided is too aqua and doesn't contain enough green. Which is weird, because "Tea Leaf" actually has the word LEAF in it, so you would think that it would be greener, right? I can remember the name "Tea Leaf," precisely because it has a context clue for green embedded in it. I have to struggle to remember "Wind Chime," because, based on 41 years of observing wind, it doesn't seem to have any color associated with it whatsoever.
Maybe I should write "Wind Chime" in Sharpie Marker somewhere on my person so I won't forget it. Oh, wait, I just blogged about it. So perhaps I should write "January 7th blog post" on my person in Sharpie Marker, so I will remember where to look.
The name of the stain for the lower cabinets likewise doesn't match the color itself. At all. Yet, somehow, this makes me remember the name? Because, seriously, people, my mother-in-law inhabits an Arts and Crafts ranch house straight outta Frank Lloyd Wright that is stacked to the rafters with Stickley furniture, and her son and I share her affinity for all things Mission and all things oak. So believe me when I say that Sherwin Williams' "Mission Oak" is completely misnamed. It's espresso. Period, paragraph. But it's what I want for the lower cabinets and the pantry. And I can remember the name because it's "Mission Oak."
PJ went with me to Sherwin Williams. He absorbed snippets of my discussion with the SW reps about "Mission Oak" (the name of the stain) and "Mission Oak on Cherry" (the relevant sample of the stain on the sample card, since the cabinets are cherrywood). Specifically, he absorbed, and retained, the word "Cherry." BECAUSE HE'S BUDDY THE ELF.
Lamar the Cabinet Guy: What stain did you pick out?
Buddy [playing on the steps in the front yard while Lamar and I talk]: Cherry. I went with her, and she picked Cherry. Like the fruit that they put on ice cream and in Sonic drinks.
God, I love that kid. Now arriving: the one-track mind. One-track mind arriving on Track . . . well, I guess that would be Track One, huh?
I like cherries, too. And I'm fairly sure that the molding on my cabinets will be the cherry on the sundae that is my new-old kitchen.
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