Saturday, August 19, 2006

The Ford Philosophy of Colour



Henry Ford said, "They can have a Model T in any colour they want, as long as they want black."

Well, we found that the carpet warehouse subscribes to the Ford Philosophy of Colour, except their colour of choice is beige. There are three hundred shades of beige and they had a roll in every one of them. They had one roll of "bluish" carpet, of such abysmal quality and design that no one in their right mind would have wanted it. Even their salesman admitted it would be best used as a drop cloth.

So, we hove ourselves to the Home Depot. They announced our arrival on the loudspeaker as we entered the store, presumably to allow the sales staff time to hide. But, praise all Cosmic Forces, they had a roll of blue, acceptable quality, carpet. It's not exactly what I wanted but I was desperate. We also bought underlay (underlay, underlay, arriba!!!) and several hundred dollars worth of other odds and ends. We left there loaded to the gills.

I was up and painted the second coat on the light blue stripe before 10:00 am. It dried like lightening and two hours later I put a coat of varathane over it, to give it more gloss and protect it a bit. Ian arrived about 11:00 and began working on the roof. We now have to hope it doesn't rain until this first of roof coat is dry. It was drying fast, as the roof was too hot to touch with a bare hand.

Tonio, who has finally recovered from his long spell of weakness induced by too much activity, sat outside in a lawn chair, soaked up the sun and supervised the cat and the painting.

Unfortunately the directions on the can of roof coat were optimistic about the coverage. Using their calculations we should have had lots for two coats, but Ian barely managed to finish the first coat with one gallon. So, as soon as he finished we headed off to buy another gallon, and some other stuff we had forgotten before. Will this never end?

Now Ian's off to get ready to attend the wedding of two friends, and I'm gathering the energy to go out and do more. There are several small jobs we could do, if we can get up steam to do them.

I just realized there's no beige anywhere in the trailer. We've taken it from seven shades of brown, dirty gold and dark green to ice white, pale apricot and blue with stainless steel accents. Looks pretty sharp.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sounds like progress is your new middle name.

Just back from a bike ride down to Magnolia Court. Returned some videos
amd of got three new ones.

Today our bed arrived and we are going crack the champagne left for us as a housewarming gift from the previous owners.

High style.
SMM

Deb said...

Ha!

You have all you need - the bed and champagne. And you weren't even trying to simplify! I am sooo jealous!