A client of mine called me for help choosing a color for her livingroom ceiling. She wanted something really "wow," she said. The ceiling was high and vaulted with a fantastic crown molding that took six pieces to construct. I gave her one idea, her decorator had a different idea and, as it turned out, her eight friends had eight other ideas.

Color is a strange beast. Look closely at the walls in any room and you'll notice that the colors appear differently in different parts of the room. A reflection here, a shadow there; sometimes you'd swear that the color on one wall is nothing at all like the one next to it, when in fact they are the same. Color is a product of light. If a tree falls in the woods it makes a sound whether someone hears it or not. The tree's leaves are green, however, only if there is light present.

Like the money that you didn't put away in your 20's and 30's,the education that you didn't finish-or start- like that scalding catastrophic romance eons ago that grayed everything you've done since, wood paneling has survived the years and haunts our present. You want to just make it go away and break into, at least the 1990's but it is just to big.

"Can't I just paint it?" you ask. Like our President says, yes we can.

Being a hardcore francophile I can't get too worked up about my profession being called the "faux" thing. I mean, it's French and that alone lets a lot of things pass. Still, the word is a little unfortunate. When people say things like "fee fi faux" or "just faux you" I want to scream. Since faux means false it is unsettling to hear the other painters on a job refer to me as the faux painter." Or worse, the faux guy. We all have our cross.