What colour did you say it was?

Seven years ago, when I made new shutters for the downstairs bedrooms, we decided to change the colour of the shutters to a bright blue.  The colour was called "Pebble Drift 4" by Dulux.  We then also painted the shutters for the sitting room windows, and finally the door to the pool house, when that was put up.  All good so far.

The bedroom shutters desperately need a new coat of paint - the outside of them get a lot of sunshine year round when they are closed.  We decided to get a fresh tin of Pebble Drift 4, and this week I set to on the re-paint.  Except... the name's the same, but the colour is different.  This one is much lighter - nice, but not the same.

This is what the shutters did look like:

And this is the new, delicate colour:

The problem is that the living room shutters and the door to the pool house (which did need re-doing) also needed to be painted.  The living room shutters really need replacing - I will be doing that next spring, so I admit that I just slapped the coat of gloss on, with little preparation.

Dulux should not use a previous name for a completely different colour!

Lots of jobs

We're here at La Matha for a week, with a lot of little jobs to do to prepare for the year ahead.  We've also been choosing tiles, and finalising the timetable for the refurbishment of the downstairs bathroom.  I will take before and after photos to share on this blog.

Little things like repairing the fencing around the pool, repainting the large shower-room (not such a little job), replacing cushion covers, sorting out stuff in the garden and general tidying up.

At the same time, we've also been enjoying good food and wine.  We went to the market at Sauveterre de Guyenne and had a good lunch there in the sunshine (cold wind, at the start of the week, though!); we've eaten at Gensaké, La Terrasse and a few other places for lunch.

I will be returning in a week's time with some furniture.  I will post photos and give more information at the time.