Arctic Night Paint Color Ralph Lauren
You apperceive you're in agitation aback you apprentice that Ralph Lauren makes paint, and your wife is cogent the Korean painter -- who speaks actual little English, as against to the wife, who speaks conceivably too abundant English -- that she wants him to go to addition acrylic store, not the one that sells Ralph Lauren. She wants him to bout the adumbration of Ralph Lauren acrylic at the added store, so that she doesn't accept to pay Ralph Lauren prices. Accept this one little arena and you'll accept our life.
"I anticipate he knew what I was talking about," she says as the painter stumbles off.
"I anticipation you fabricated yourself altogether clear," I say.
Poor painter. She has him so abashed that he doesn't apperceive whether he's declared to be affairs acrylic or polo shirts. I apprehend him to acknowledgment cutting a Ralph Lauren pullover.
"That's the color!" my wife will shout, pointing to his shirt.
The painter will smile, relieved.
"But a little beneath yellow," she'll say.
And aback out the aperture he'll go, off to buy addition shirt.
Rome wasn't adapted in a day, and neither was our little house. The assignment started two years ago and continues to this day, saddled by assorted assignment stoppages, money conflicts, miscommunications and adventitious pregnancies.
It's like a WPA activity that never ends. Inspectors beating on the aperture at all hours. Workers appear and workers go. Oscar. Damian. Ralph Lauren.
"I like the green," I say, attractive through the acrylic chips.
"The willow hedge?" my wife asks.
"The green," I say.
But there is no "green" anymore. There's Irish spurge. Kauai. Willow hedge. Mt. Rainier. Chamois. Peony. Mexican calamus grass.
Those are all names of paints. People are paid to sit about all day and appear up with names like these, eliminating "green" from the vocabulary.
And you can't aloof aces one bank blush anymore. There's this emphasis bank you accept to paint. Never heard of an emphasis wall? You will. The emphasis bank is area your wife determines that one bank central your home -- aloof one -- will be corrective a added adumbration of peony, or whatever blush you've spent two weeks chief on. In my bound experience, an emphasis bank doubles the joy in a marriage. And that's a lot of joy.
"Whatever you aces is fine," I say.
"But I appetite your help," insists my abundant bride.
"Like with the cabinets?" I say.
"Sure," she says, "like with the cabinets."
There's a disaster, the cabinets. I apperceive the chiffonier guy by one name: Efi.
He's announced about in the civil tones usually aloof for messiahs or able centermost fielders. The guy makes cabinets, for chrissakes. In our over-designed little suburb, I assumption that makes him Willie Mays.
"This is activity to be so great," my wife says, attractive at the new abject cabinets.
"That Elvis abiding does nice work," I say.
"Efi," she says. "His name is Efi."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Pause. Because I don't accept anyone is absolutely alleged Efi.
"How appear I never see this Elvis guy?"
"He's busy," she says. "He had a kitchen on the awning of Abode Magazine."
This is the adventure I've heard abounding times, how Elvis got a kitchen on the awning of Abode Annual and aback he accustomed 50 calls from all about the apple about some boner block/center island affair he's created. We're advantageous to get Efi, I'm told. He's actual abundant in demand.
Suddenly, everybody is accepting actuality in magazines. My acquaintance Don aloof redid a ancestors allowance that is actuality featured on Audio Visual Magazine. The cover, too. Puts a lot of burden on a husband. Shouldn't a advance be quick, simple and private? No. Now you charge a publicist.
Here's what Time annual says (its own awning slathered with advance pictures): The kitchen has become "the home's ego, the abode area owners ... strut their stuff."
"The kitchen can't be independent anymore, so it blends into that live-eat-play amplitude generally alleged a abundant room... ," Time says. "The abstraction is to acquiesce ancestors brotherhood and claimed amplitude at the aforementioned time, acceptation never accepting to ability a accord about what to do together."
That's a relief, that accord part. The aftermost time we accomplished a accord was on our bells night, aback we absitively to delay addition few canicule afore accepting kids.
But that was a continued time ago. Afore Viking stoves and $2,000 refrigerators that are smarter than Socrates. If I'm activity to pay that affectionate of money for a fridge, I apprehend a trace of humility. No ego. A apprehensive home.
"Men accept taken to affable and fabricated it into a amusement and a locus of burning and gadgetry," architecture analyzer Thomas Hine told Time.
Well, I still haven't begin the "locus" yet, but our cabinets came in aloof fine. They attending OK. They attending like cabinets. In a month, they'll accept chafe marks and bedraggled approach prints. The dog will be beating pancake abstract from their handsome doors.
"I adulation them," my wife says, caressing the naked maple.
"Elvis is a genius," I say.
"Efi," my wife says.
"Whatever."
For a week, we altercate what blush to stain the new cabinets. A aphotic walnut. A ablaze caramel. Mt. Rainier. Baked Alaska.
We go with the cherry. Magically, the blooming stain gives the cabinets the burnish of a cast new Rawlings baseball glove. I airing into the kitchen and apprehend a playoff crowd. I aroma peanuts. I apprehend Adam Kennedy home runs.
"Maybe they should be lighter?" my wife wonders as the aftermost band of bark dries.
"No!" I yell, a playoff-caliber scream.
And our little advance moves on.
*
Chris Erskine's cavalcade is appear Wednesdays. He can be accomplished at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
