Mr. Slakethirst and I met with a color consultant on Wednesday and picked a new roof color for the house. It sounds much less exciting than it is. 
We chose “Heather Blend” — a subtly shaded, warm-hued shingle, predominantly golden but with flecks of cool green. Exterior paint color consulting won’t happen until next spring. By that time, the new roof will be installed and the weather will hopefully be good enough to practically consider painting. I’m a little sad that the fun part — the paint choosing part — has been put off for a few months but oh, well.
I have had one minor issue with the roofing company, so far. Our house color consultant required shingle samples so we could look at the different color choices in our particular exterior environment. When I requested samples from the roofers, I got the sense that my request was highly unusual, above and beyond. Not only would they not supply samples, but they didn’t even suggest that such a thing was a possibility. I was told again about their display out in Gresham, which I had already seen — it was helpful at the time, but their open parking lot did not exactly mimic the more sylvan setting of our house. I called Mary McMurray, the color consultant, in a panic and she suggested some roofing supply places that I could check out. I did some running around and gathered shingle swatches from a couple places and found that there are whole sample boards put together by the roofing company for precisely this purpose — ABC Supply happily handed over numerous sample boards (even though they were running low) and Dealers Supply handed over whole shingles as if it was the most usual thing in the world. Needless to say, I’m a little annoyed by our roofers. I completely intend on telling them that this is a need they need to accommodate in some way, but I’ll save that for the end-of-project evaluation. Maybe their usual customers don’t request this? Hm hm hm.
A xylothek is generally speaking a collection of simple pieces of wood specimens placed together in some kind of cupboard. In a refined form it is in the shape of “books” where you can find details from the tree inside, everything arranged as a “library”. This latter form flourished in Germany around 1790-1810. Four different manufacturers existed and three of them offered their products for sale…Each “book” describes a certain tree species and is made out of the actual wood (the “covers”). The spine is covered by the bark, where mosses and lichens from the same tree are arranged. “Books” of shrubs are covered with mosses with split branches on both covers and spines. —The Wooden Library in Alnarp
