Putty

We've arrived at the stage of discussing 'fine details.' Not that we've ever stopped thinking about the finer details of this renovation, agonising over doors and kitchen appliances has become part of our daily routine, like brushing teeth and picking up the children's dirty socks.

Our kitchen designer is waiting for decisions from us, not least a decision about what colour the kitchen will be. See, if you buy from Wickes or John Lewis then you don't get much choice; they'll lay out some cabinet doors and you choose from 'linen' or 'buttermilk' or else you'll go for a high gloss aubergine in some moment of hormonal madness and probably regret it a fortnight later. But a kitchen maker peson will give you free reign, or as Emile said to us, 'you can have any colour in the world you like.'

Now that's my idea of a nightmare; 'option paralysis' being a real threat to the progress of any extension where you're given an actual choice. Initially I wanted the kitchen painted in Farrow and Ball's 'Elephant's Breath' because I'd seen one in a magazine, but painting sample pots onto lining paper revealed 'Elephant's Breath' to be more reminiscent of the horrible grey tiles adorning the existing bathroom and pretty soon we'd settled for 'Cornforth White' and chosen the granite to match.

But then I saw this larder cupboard in Marks and Spencer, which hit me in the face as I glided up the escalator towards the bedding department and had me waxing lyrical to the sales assistant about the colour, which the label described as 'putty.'

Of course, Dr B. had to be consulted about this 'putty', so I took him along to visit the larder cupboard and he agreed it was all very suitable and advised we needed to go to B&Q to pick up some paint charts in an effort to match the colour. And not just B&Q but also Homebase (who stock Farrow and Ball) and then John Lewis too, because you can't discount that lovely understated Sanderson paint, can you?

John Lewis had whole walls of Sanderson paint charts, but none of them looked putty-ish to me, though some were out of stock. Typically, the paint charts that were out of stock turned out to be the ones we wanted, so we had to order them from head office and wait for them to come in the post. And when we laid them all out, we found some of them were obviously too brown or too pink or too grey, which left me with a handful of samples to take back to compare with the larder in Marks and Spencer.

I managed to narrow it down to four colours and bought the sample pots, though none seemed exactly right from the charts. Relaying the story of the elusive 'putty' to our friends Claire and James, James suggested I paint the samples onto wood rather than lining paper, explaining the wood might take up the colour more accurately than the paper and disappearing into his shed to saw off some old bits of knotted pine as the best match he could find for the oak doors that we'll have painted. 'And you'll need primer too', he shouted from the garage as I left, emerging with a half-empty tin of the stuff.

So I primed the wood and waited overight for that to dry before painting two to four coats of the four samples, depending on how much the wood showed through. Finally, I took the wood sample to Marks and Spencer to compare it to the larder cupboard, which lo and behold was an exact match to the colour you can see on the right hand side.

The colour is by Farrow and Ball. It's called Elephant's Breath.