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The Frosted Dawn Enigma

The decorators are in at the moment. Stairs and landing. Given my previous history of 'Hoo Ha Occurring on Stairs ' - reference the Trapped Under the Sofa Incident and the Foot Wedged Between Bookcase and Stair Rise Debacle - I thought it wise to pay for professionals to decorate the stairs and landing rather than get myself in a mix with ladder and plank combinations and achieve the Magic Three of staircase accidents.

The decorators are a father and son combo who go by the  names of Craig and David. This automatically causes me entertainment. 'Came in on a Monday, prepped, filled and undercoated, back on Thursday, first top coating, by Friday finishing touches...' Okay, not as frisky or well-scanned as the original song, but you get where I'm coming from.

Anyway, before they started the job Craig asked what colour I wanted for the walls. 'Same colour as the downstairs walls, please,' said I. 'Dulux Frosted Dawn.' And then white for all the woodwork, and Peridot for the doors, which is a soft green. Not grey. Green.

Now, call me a woman, but if I was a decorator I would be gadding off to Homebase or B & Q or another paint emporium and purchasing one large can of Dulux Frosted Dawn. Yes? Wouldn't you? Bish bosh, job done. What I would NOT do would be making my life difficult by going to a Crown mixing station place and asking them to mix up the Crown equivalent of Dulux Frosted Dawn. I would regard this as a pointless activity. But then I am not a decorator. What do I know?

On Monday, Craig and David did all the filling of holes and smoothing of rough surfaces, and base coating the woodwork and painting the ceiling. David sports a magnificent head of dreadlocks. Bambino Bobble Wilson was fascinated by the dreadlocks, swinging away as they were in time with David and his brush strokes. I removed Bambino Bobble Wilson from the decorating vicinity. Previous experience has taught me that cats and paint  are not natural companions, and I didn't like to think what might happen if one added swinging dreadlocks into the equation. The cat then sat staring forlornly at the closed door 'twixt him and his new best bud David for upwards of an hour, casting me occasional reproachful glances for spoiling his fun.

This morning, Craig and David returned for Day 2 of 3. Peridot green (not grey) for the doors - check. Dulux Frosted Dawn for the walls? Nope. Dulux Frosted Dawn, for the uninitiated, is a soft off-white-barely-there-cream colour. What the Crown paint tin revealed was a pale lilac with a hint of (dare I say) grey. Craig and I agreed that Something Amiss Must Have Occurred At The Mixing Station. If Craig thought I was going to say, 'Go on then, let's have pale lilac-grey on an middle-of-the-house-staircase-lit-by-a-small-north-east-facing-window,' then he was very disappointed.

Craig duly phoned his mate, Mick, at the Crown mixing station. Mick, it seems, misheard the word 'Dawn' for 'Fawn.' What the tin contained was 'Frosted Fawn.'

Hang on, I thought. Frosted Fawn? Since when has a fawn remotely looked lilac?   Even at dawn? Ah well. Craig disappeared to obtain the correct paint, David cracked on with Peridoting the doors and Bambino Bobble Wilson sat on a bar chair in the kitchen, sulking. I thought of offering to nip up the road and buy a big old can of Dulux Frosted Dawn from Homebase, but then I thought, 'Woman, know your place,' and set about doing girly things like paying a couple of bills, vacuuming a rug and chatting to my blogging pal, Mrs Rusty Duck, about how men can make the purchasing of paint such a complicated task. She agreed with me about the impossibility of lilac fawns.    

Next job - organise some carpet for the stairs. Nothing fawn.


Comments

rusty duck said…
Now you didn’t mention that Frosted Fawn has grey undertones. That would have been completely different matter.
Denise said…
Not in my books it wouldn’t! It added an air of sludge.

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