Light vs. Dark

The Kenmore Arms has been bustling this week.  My climbing roses are finally gathering courage and beginning to wrap themselves with long graceful sweeps around the front balcony. 

Maybe it's good karma rubbing off from this book I'm reading...

...because I have what's known in horticultural circles as the dreaded "thumb noir". Even cacti wither around me. But speaking as a newfound optimalist, the bright side could be that I have undiscovered talents in composting.

Anyway, let's move inside, where the painters have been busy priming and painting since Monday. I have been itching to redo my upstairs office for a while now and, after much consideration, settled on Farrow and Ball's "Old White." It's a beautiful color, gentle and soft. 

And I liked it for all of four hours.

(Tuesday, April 5th)

Unfortunately, as soon as it dried I had a huge revelation that what I actually wanted was the complete opposite. (Why do all revelations come after you write the check?)  I craved drama, mood, mystery. My office needs to double as an occasional Lilliput-sized screening room and I wanted a destination that would feel sophisticated by day and ever-so-slightly sexy by night. A bit Babington House...

with just a dash of 18th century Spitalfields.

(Photo of Dennis Sever's house, which I discovered through a 

commenter... Thank you, Linda! I am officially obsessed.)

Dark doesn't scare me. As you can imagine, life here in California is very, very sunny (to put it mildly). To me, the sun is a huge Klieg light in the sky with its spotlight relentlessly trained on every man, woman and child. It's fine for The Divine Italian; he's a heat-seeker. I, however, am Norwegian and Irish and I am a pale snail looking for a dark refuge. 

So I bit the bullet and told the painters to come back on Thursday so that they could redo what they just that minute finished doing. 

This time, I went with Farrow and Ball's "Railings", a deep bluey-black...

(Thursday, April 7th)

...and I can't believe how much more I love it. It's a totally different room. It was suffering from an identity crisis and now it's found itself.

And see, it still gets a lot of light. And despite its admittedly more masculine feel, right beyond those French doors are all those sun-loving roses, entwined in pink splendor.  So it's all very yin yang. 

Of course, now that it's painted, I am itching to change everything else. Like the curtains, the couch and the desk chair. Last November, I was lucky enough to visit Peter Dunham's "Gentleman's Study" at Veranda Magazine's Greystone Mansion Showhouse and I still can't get it out of my head.

I would love to create my own mini homage to it at The Kenmore Arms. His "Globe" curtains speak to me in a profound way. They're very Royal Geographic Society meets Diana Vreeland.

And I might have to reupholster my desk chair in his "Almont Stripe".

Stay tuned.