Art on White Dove

I stopped by the house today and there was so much going on I forgot to take pictures! I've never seen more than 4 "real" workers (i.e. people besides us + whoever is nice enough to do us a favor) in the house so it was quite distracting.

One team was bringing our electrical up to date, my Dad and his crew, Alan and Irwin, were working on moving the door to our bathroom (more on that when I can get to the pictures) and Chris the painter was plugging along. We've now owned the house for 5 weeks and Chris has been there every day doing prep work — yep, there was a lot of prep work — but we definitely found the right guy for the job because he hasn't looked frustrated once.

Chris was supposed to start painting the exterior on Monday, but for those of you who aren't in Charlotte, the sky is pouring buckets this week. Luckily we had finalized the decision for the interior paint so he could keep moving inside.

After some deliberation – although not nearly as much as the exterior paint deliberation – I decided on Benjamin Moore's White Dove. It was the first color suggested by my interior designer friend Margaret, however I decided to drive myself crazy by testing every other off-white I heard any other person or magazine recommend. Then of course finally landed back at White Dove.

Margaret's and my thought was to do the whole house, except a handful of smaller rooms like bathrooms and the office, in the White Dove. We're even doing the trim in White Dove to minimize the transition from wall to trim. In an ideal world we'd have very minimal trim, but considering we are keeping a good amount of the original walls, it's too much to remove the trim at this point — so we will downplay it instead.

I've never been much for colored rooms because 1) I'm afraid I will get tired of the color quickly and want to change it and 2) I love the idea of the clean white walls as a backdrop for our artwork to really stand out as the focal point.

We've been very slowly buying what we love over the years. Below are the last few things to make their way home with us, the first two which are still awaiting frames. (Which reminds me...)

Silkscreen by Joseph Albers (I remember studying his color theories in Graphic Design school)

"Prada Marfa at Dawn" – Photograph by Gray Malin

Painting by my talented friend Susan Carter Hall

"Revolution" – Photographed backstage at John Galliano, by Mark Leibowitz

Our stuff has been in storage for several months now so it is fun seeing our things again, even if only online! Here's hoping the scale of what we have works in the new house....