Flipped

Some of you will recognise this image, except that here it's flipped. (Better it than me.) Some of you will have read a précis of this text under the original image. This is the full-stress version.

If we don't meet the 4pm deadline tomorrow for getting the window and door specs to the manufacturers, the end date for the build slips even further. I also have to sign the contract by then and pay a hefty deposit. I am on it: I have signed and scanned the contract and it is ready to email as soon as everything is agreed; I have arranged a transfer of funds from my savings to my current account. 

From 08:50 yesterday to 22:50 today 20 emails went back and forth between the architects, the builder, the window supplier and me about windows and doors. Today, while I was at work, I was involved in one detailed phone call with the window supplier (following up my questions from looking at the specs between midight and 1am this morning - see yesterday's blip) and one with the architect. There were other phone calls I wasn't involved in.

The discussions were about which sides hinges are on, cill details, millimetres of difference in the measurements, making sure windows align with others top and bottom, me asking why the two windows I'd requested for the window opening in my bedroom have morphed in the drawings into one vast unwieldy one, other much more technical issues and the least technical of all: what colour the front door will be.

It will be yellow (yes, yellow) but what shade?

The paint has to be specified in RAL colours. I can see them on a monitor but I know very well that screen colours are not the same as final paint colours. Never mind, I can find out the equivalent of the RAL colours are in CMYK (print colours) and in Pantone and I have books of swatches for both those from when I was doing graphic design work. 

Except that the Pantone for one of the two RAL colours I am considering is the more orange hue and the CMYK for that same colour is the less orange hue. Also, by the time I've got this far it is evening. I am looking under artificial light and I want to see them in daylight. So I cannot know which one I want. I need to see a RAL swatch and the architect's offices are closed. Normally I could go there in the morning but I have arranged with my brother to leave early for London to visit our uncle.

Am I to pick a yellow out of the blue?

The 22:50 email this evening was when I realised that my uncle lives not too far from the window supplier so I could call in tomorrow afternoon, just before the 4pm deadline, if they have the right RAL swatches there. That has the advantage that, assuming they, the builder and the architect have finalised all the technical details by then, I could hand over the signed contract and they could watch me transfer what I owe them, just in case the money does not reach their account by 4pm.

It's a possible solution but, understandably, the windows supplier does not reply before I go to bed...