Pisshead (not)

Happy Easter!

Mayhem this morning -- everything bar the table from the dining room which happens to be a conservatory was squidged into the kitchen thanks to the purple painting going on yesterday. Then add two people who don't normally cook together and get them cooking together, with about four square inches of worktop free.

Something had to go, and it did -- Miles smashed a picture frame while negotiating his way to the pan cupboard. (Or just the cupboard, for our never-to-be-sufficiently-damned kitchen has only one, but that's another story.) Broken glass and food do not mix well. It was tense.

But it all worked out in the end, and six of us sat down to a splendiferous roast dinner only half an hour later than planned, and with it some of the aforementioned Chablis. Very, very cold, it was, very smooth, and very, very delicious. It was like revisiting a foreign country, where the waters are warmer and it's tempting to swim out into them, but you know it could turn stormy at any moment.

Ah, wine. So we got a bit drunk but not very. Everything was sparkly and giggly for a bit, and then our guests left and S disappeared with her Quiet Man, and I settled down for a little snooze.

And now it's all normal again, except I feel a bit lazy and crumpled round the edges. Which I guess I am.

So this evening, rather than heading out on the piss, I have been trying to resolve the Great Bathroom Dispute. S wants it blue, only blue is allowed, no other colours except maybe purple. I am happy with blue but want a contrasting colour for the woodwork, of which there is quite a lot. I have had enough of purple. I bought a print of Cherry Autumn by Bridget Riley to hang in there and want to use a blue from that with one of the orangey-pinks or orangey-yellows.

S maintains that blue and orange can never exist in harmony, and I am out to convince her that they can, as long as they are the right blue and the right orange. And I have discovered a fantastic feature on the Dulux website called MousePainter. You choose a room to play with, choose the photo that's most like your room, then try different colours of paint on the walls, the woodwork, the floor etc.

The colours are a bit off, but it's a lot better than squinting at colour charts and trying to imagine them all over your walls. You can also ask it to suggest coordinating colours, or choose only from certain ranges. This is what DIY websites should be about. I approve.

The version on the Dulux Australia site is called MyColour and is even better -- you can see what it's like at night as well as in the daytime, and the rooms are bigger. But the paint colours are different. Why is that? Do Australians actually have different colours or do they just call them different things?

On both though you can save your schemes to show your sceptical housemates, and print off a list of all the colours you need. Then, if you measure your room, you can pop over to the Wickes website and put in the dimensions, and it will tell you how many pots of paint you need.

I think that's enough DIY websites for one day.

joella