The More Things Change...

The French have a wonderful expression, "plus ca change, plus ca fait rien" which translates to "the more things change, the more nothing happens" (or, figuratively, "...the more they stay the same").   (Sorry I'm missing the accent marks, but they're not copying from the source...oh, well.)  I am reminded of it because I was out over the weekend running errands and decided to finally use a gift card to a local True Value hardware store that I'd been given for Christmas...several years ago!  I knew I would use it on paint, but wasn't sure at the time what I would be painting.  Now I know.

So I stopped in at the hardware store that sells my favorite Benjamin Moore paints in search of the perfect "greyge" - that wonderful combination of grey and beige - a light taupe - that I've loved since I painted the living room that color in my first house, 30+ years ago.  I'd seen the color in a magazine spread - Glamour or Mademoiselle, I can't remember which - paired with fabrics in a strong rust color and I loved the way it gave a warm, cozy and calming ambience to a tiny New York City apartment bedroom.  I still have the page from that magazine in my files.  The color worked for me then, and it still does.

I found just the right color for my first living room (painted by former occupants a dusty rose pink at the time - yikes!) in the collection made by Pittsburgh Paints.  It was called "Deep Twilight."  I loved it in that living room for years.  I could change the colors of the upholstered furnishings, drapes and rugs, but they always worked with that wonderful wall color.  I still love it - just dark enough to be a statement, but not so dark that it is overpowering, but I hadn't used it since for an interior space.  The styles and rooms of my two subsequent homes made color statements that were already well established when I arrived and I was not so invested in remaking their spaces.

Eventually, however, about 10 years ago, I needed to repaint the exterior of my small, traditional farmhouse in the country.  Its stark white clapboards, while brilliant and classic in their day (early 1800s), had been repainted (and perhaps even replaced), but the years had taken their toll and they had become a shadow (a sort of dusty, dingy shadow) of their former crisp, white selves.  With matching white (well, dirty white) trim, there was nothing notable about the house's appearance or architecture - it all blended together, obscuring the special features that distinguished the mouldings around the doors, windows, rooflines and porch from the siding.  That's when I decided the white clapboards had to give way to my favorite warm and toasty taupe and I'd refresh the trim with a warmer tone of ivory.

Off I went to the paint store with my old taupe paint chip in hand to find a Benjamin Moore color that was as close as I could get to that wonderful "Deep Twilight."  I found it in one of Moore's "America's Colors," a warm tone called "Berkshire Beige" (code number AC-2 - click on the link at the color name to check it out).  It seemed appropriate enough as the house was just a few miles from the border where the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts were located - I liked the reference to the region nearby.  So,  up it went on the siding and - voila! - the house became more inviting and the newly painted bright white trim details suddenly popped out, defining more clearly the house's cheerful Colonial roots and its subsequent folk Victorian embellishments.  It was a resounding success.

Ironically, the style trends of the 1970s have, in some ways, re-emerged in the past decade or so. Neutral tones - what I'll call the "Pottery Barn palette" - again serve as pleasing backgrounds with strong accent colors now favored, whether black, navy, a rusty barn red or rich pastels, etc.  So I thought I'd go check out the latest in the contemporary color palettes over the past weekend to see if I could find a rich, new greyge/taupe hue to use to renew the kitchen walls of the midcentury modern ranch that has been my home for the past five years and my family's home for more than 50 years.  The old, dingy aqua - the only color this heart of the home has ever known that was so trendy in its day - finally has to GO!  Seriously.

I perused the choices - dozens of them - and pulled sample chips from the racks and scrutinized them.  When I'd finally narrowed the options, I stepped over to the rack with the aforementioned "America's Colors" and re-examined my old favorite, Berkshire Beige.  I held it next to the other chips and, don't you know, when it was all said and done, I went with Berkshire Beige yet again!  Nothing else is quite like it.  Other deeper taupe choices would have been too dark in this room that only gets sunlight from the east in the morning, and lighter tones just weren't colorful enough and wouldn't set off the light, natural maple wood that is hidden beneath the age/smoke/grease-darkened finish of the cabinets.  (Their restoration/rejuvenation is another major project I'll be tackling in the near future as well, after I paint the walls.)

I haven't started painting the kitchen yet, but, yes, I'll take some photos of the "before" stage before I do, so you can see the transformation.  I have no time frame in mind, though, and work and other imperatives take priority at the moment, but now that I finally have the color decided and the paint in hand, it won't be too long before I break out the dropcloths, rollers, and brushes, so stay tuned.

"Plus ca change...."