Paint Colors

Before the holidays we sent out a survey to the entire staff to find out what they liked and disliked about our current building and what they hoped we could do and not do in the new building. There were a few overwhelming requests that came from the surveys, one of them was color. Consequently, one of our main goals for the new building is to have more color. If you’ve ever walked through our current building the one color that comes to mind is gray. There’s lots of gray walls. We’re trying to lock the paint colors for the interior. We thought we had a palate that we liked but to be sure we bought small cans of each so we could paint some walls and test out what we chose, and it’s a good thing we did. We spent yesterday afternoon painting various tests on the walls and of the four of us there (Mary Anne, David, Robbie and me), I don’t think there was a single color that we all agreed on. The one thing we all pretty much agreed on was that the sample cards we had been looking at didn’t match the paint once we put it on the walls.

So it’s back to the drawing board on paint. Tomorrow will be day 2 of paint choosing. Mary Anne made a comment that now she understand how things end up gray, because you start out with such grand plans and in the end, gray is the only thing everyone can agree on and it’s the safest. Rest assured, if we end up with simple light gray walls, it won’t be for lack of effort to find other colors.

Yesterday we also spent an hour presenting the progress on the new home to the staff. The biggest challenge we (David, Mary Anne and I) face is expectations and understanding that not everything can be done at once. It would be great if we had 6 months for the build out and an unlimited budget. We have 6 weeks and a limited budget so we cannot do EVERYTHING. It will be a work in progress for probably the first year we are in the new place. We know we need to add partitions in the big spaces so they don’t feel like sweatshops. We know we need to update more of the dated parts of the building. We know we need to do some things that were on the “want” not the “need” list for the initial build out. As long as our staff understands we’re going to do the best we can for day 1 and keep making improvements as we can, I think it’s going to be a great new home for us and everyone will be excited to come to work every day.