i [heart] salmon

While we were on our trip, we had the baseboard trim and shoe moulding installed in the living room.   We now have spackled, caulked and painted trim that'll be dry and ready for for furniture re-positioning tomorrow.  Oh what we get excited about around here these days!

The next big step for the living room is having custom bookcases with cabinet space below a small counter ledge installed where that awful hearth used to be.  Remember this?1?

It probably won't be cheap, but I think it'll add a huge amount to the room, and provide me with some much-needed storage space [I still can't figure out where to hide my sewing machine and growing textile collection...] 

Which finally brings me to this whole salmon thing.  I like the fish, sure, but I've also decided that the backs of the bookcases need to be a nice, warm contrasting color to the Edgecomb Gray that we painted the room.  And because I grew up in a house with a salmon/terra cotta dining room, this seems like a good choice.  Apparently I'm the only one out there (other than my mother) who loves salmon as a paint color.  I'm having the darndest time finding room examples or paint color recommendations. This is about it:

And it's too pink.  I need something that's a cross between salmon, terra cotta and coral.  So I'll be off to the Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams stores tomorrow to check out the paint chips, but here's what I'm really loving:

The Farrow and Ball colour palette.  I am so smitten with these chalky, subdued English hues with their eccentric names like Clunch, Raddichio and Ointment Pink (looks like Calamine, only better).  I'm leaning toward a shade called Red Earth, which happens to be third from the top in the column of lighter reds there. I think it'll actually achieve salmon/terra cotta without being totally garish.  A gallon of the stuff is not cheap, so I'm hoping we can get away with a couple of smaller cans for this little accent job.