Plaster pigments, paint colors, and shares needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Those are the color samples for the interior plaster top coat. It's a good thing we brought them home; what looked perfect in the artist's studio look far too dark and red next to the red fir of the support beams and the lintels. We think we've narrowed it down to Sanderling, on the far left, or Hawthorn, the one with gray undertones second from right. At the moment, Hawthorn's edging ahead.

We have to look at them in the bright sunlight tomorrow morning, though. We also have to decide on a color for the exterior plaster. This is the one we brought home:

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Yeah, I know; it's almost impossible to tell what color it is in that bright sunlight. Ironically, that may be the very thing that settles it. In the shade, it looks far too red. In the light? It looks like the walls of the thousand-year-old village homes, and you can see why the Spanish thought they'd found the so-called Cities of Gold. Wings likes it; I'm a little less sure, but I'm also absolutely ready to defer to his preferences on it.

We also picked up the paint for the spare bedroom/office today: warm rich brown, metallic bronze, and brilliant chile-pepper red. I doubt I'll have a chance to get to it before Wednesday at the earliest, and more likely Thursday, but you never know. In the meantime, the crew comes back tomorrow to finish up the scratch coat, and we may have a short hiatus between that and the second coat, since we still have to order both pigment and mica. There's plenty for them to do, regardless, and it's supposed to rain most of the week, beginning Tuesday, so it might wind up being for the best.

But it's all still extremely costly, and so we still need link shares:

• Wings's PayPal account, for donations to the house fund. [As I said last night, my best estimate on what's been raised so far on this $30K stage is $7,500, leaving a balance yet to raise of $22,500. $7K+ of that is going to have to be reserved for the septic, and labor's eating us alive on the daily, so that's going to mean a lot of juggling.] If that link doesn't work, it's tied to his e-mail address: wingsoftaos [at] newmex [dot] com. Also, that link? It's a direct one now, rather than via the "Donate" button, so it should work better.
• His Web site, for sales (always preferable, and the base upon which the whole project hinges anyway, along with paying our day-to-day living expenses) — and just by the way, he's got some really incredible new works up now.
• Our Amazon wishlist, which contains Lowe's cards that will allow us to purchase some materials more cheaply than here in town, and also allow us to divert the extra funds to labor costs.

Right now, one of the things that will help us the most is the Lowe's cards. We have to order flooring soon, and the water heater (which I think we can get through them; if so, it'll be cheaper than trying to do it locally). But there's plenty left to do on all fronts (and I have to get back to some of my own work right now). Much love and gratitude to everyone.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.