Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Advice Needed: Repainting the community after 12 years in residence

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

Bob Finn <finn [at] nasw.org>
is the author of the message below.  It was posted by
Fred, the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
after deleting quoted digest and restoring full subject.
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When we were designing Pleasant Hill Cohousing, Chuck Durrett gave us some
very good advice. He said that if we tried to choose a color by consensus,
we'd end up with beige. He suggested that we let him choose the color, which
we could then decide to accept or reject. He ended up choosing a color he
called mango, and I'm confident we never would have even considered that on
our own.

While some community members had reservations about this bright exterior
color, in the end only one community member opposed it. He is blind, and
opposed it as a joke.

In the end, Chuck's color has defined our community in a very nice way. We
sometimes refer to our community as Mangoville or Mangolia, and our a
capella singing group is called The Mango Lassies.

I guess this is a long-winded way of suggesting that you hand the decision
on exterior colors to an artistically inclined outsider, and then reject the
choice only if a large proportion of the community absolutely hates it.

Bob Finn