Renovating The Big House

It has been being over a year now since Mr bought The Big House for the Missus on their anniversary. Everyone moved in in a rush, except, of course for Mischa and Beech. (The Monkey was arriving a few months after the Big House, as I recall.)

The Big House on Vic's Deli side. You can see, Gunilla, all the scrapings of the balsa-wood window trims  on the floor. The Missus keeps muttering to herself about the gouges in the balsa, and where on earth her miter box has gone, and so forth.

Now The Missus has decided, after none of us could make up our mind about which colors we liked, to renovate The House. Most of us were sleeping through the summer anyway, she said, so we are all moving into a large, comfortable box for two weeks of invernation while she sands, paints and repairs.

The bedroom attic side. We are not poor in pots, pans or paintings, Gunilla! One is always having something to drink the good coffee out of, and eat a little bit of toast while contemplating the artist's hand.

The Missus went to the paint shop and was tormented by the wild variety of colors possible.

For Victorine, she thought, perhaps some wonderful buttery yellows and deep shades of tomato red.

For Clovis's guest room, maybe a soupcon of blue-green and turquoise with shades of smoke-purple, puce, and a splash of cream and Chinese cinnabar?

 For the deFleury cousins in the coffee room, probably some muted 1930s florals - hydrangea, heliotrope, deep rose, cactus green, and so forth.

A few of the deFleury cousins. They do love to read the morning papers in the Marigold Room.

It was, Gunilla, an impossible task.

When The Missus is seeing the shelf of mistake paints, she is seizing the whole idea of using other people's cast-offs to paint The Big House, since so much of what we are about is coming straight from junk drawers and sidewalks and the corners of boxes. Other people's unwanted treasures, is what we do best, really.

So, with the paints chosen (almost indescribable colors, but cheap, Gunilla, and, I think, quite pretty as well as serviceable) The Missus begins...



Reading in the nursery before The Missus moves everyone out for painting and cleaning.