Painters are moving along

I was a little worried because the main color on the house (something called "Ponytail," but let's not talk about it) looked lighter and more yellow than I thought it would. It is a little closer to the interior color than I wanted. Anyhow, just this morning Ray showed me a preview of what the highlight color will look like, and it really seems to make a difference. The highlight color is dark chocolate brown, and it will be used on the window sashes, the porch floors, and the concrete toppers to the brick piers and stairs. You can catch a glimpse of the haint blue I'm using on the porch ceilings in the top picture.

In the bottom picture, Sally is staring murderously over my shoulder at a squirrel in a tree.

Finally some color

Ray and his painting partner have been scraping the siding for 10 days now. They finally got the priming done over the weekend. One of them started putting a little color on the siding (probably just to get me to shut up), and the other started work on the trim. I insisted on gloss trim and satin for the siding, even though they both wanted to tone it down a notch. In one of these pictures, you can see a few of the various colors I've tried out this summer.

I ended up with probably the most boring choice other than yet another coat of white, but in the end, it is all I felt comfortable with. The dark chocolate highlight color and haint blue porch ceilings will counteract some of the hum-drum-ness of the body color. I think its going to look terrific.

New Walk & Driveway

This summer I created a new walkway out front of the house, and I created a new driveway that stretches about halfway back in the space of the former driveway.

I cut landscaping timbers into 1-foot pieces, then burried them 6-inches deep in a trough, then poured in Quickcrete to secure the pieces. Finally, I had 8 tons of local pebbles delivered. It was about 102 the day I went to pick out the type of pebbles I wanted. Anyhow, I think it all came out nice looking.

Summer of Color Waffling

I have been all over the place this summer trying to decide on a color scheme for the exterior of the house. I couldn't schedule the painters to come until last week, so I had months to think about it, bug my friends, bug random passers-by, and perhaps most of all, bug the ever-patient Joseph at Sherwin-Williams.

In the end, I sampled 12 different colors, taking advantage of their Colors-To-Go $5 quarts of paint. As of right this very minute, I am back to where I began, with Roycroft Copper Red for the body, white or cream trim, and Roycroft Bottle Green (very dark) for the highlight color.

Here's a picture of the house mid-prep. The guys have been scraping and sanding all week in really terrible heat.

Another color change of heart

Picking a color combination for the exterior is absolute murder.

After more great advice from Stephanie, I went to the drug store, printed out a picture of my house's exterior, made 20 photocopies, and began coloring with some colored pencils. I obsessed for a couple of hours and now have about 11 different color combinations. Most of them are horrible. The one that looks best to me is bone white with mahogany trim. It makes the house look a bit like an old train depot, which I like.

At first I was sure that I wanted white trim, but now I'm all over the place. After deciding to abandon white trim, I happened to drive past a bungalow with suede-colored paint on the wood siding and white trim. It looked so good, so now I'm sort of back to that. Arg!

I never imagined that I'd be the sort of person who subscribes to the Better Homes and Gardens website, but they have this great Java tool there that allows you to color in the exterior of a variety of different houses. They had one just like mine, only with much better landscaping.

Check it out. Honestly, it just left me more confused, but at least I can visualize things a bit better.

Rocky Mount, NC and Mount Laurel, NJ

I'd like to thank all of the good people from Rocky Mount, NC and Mount Laurel, NJ for visiting the site. I've started tracking stats for the blog, and visitors from these two towns account for nearly 15% of the total traffic...

More Color Choices

I don't know if you're getting sick of this yet, but I sure am. Here are two more color choices. The orange is the same color I have in my kitchen, and I really like it in there. I was considering going kind of coastal with the house, and I really like the orange. I'm afraid it is way too much though.

The other is a suede color that would look good. Its a bit boring, but I think it'd work fine.

The quality of the paint and the paint job is really terrible, but you get the idea. I've now gotten 5 quarts of "Colors To Go" from Sherwin Williams. Its terrific to be able to try out the colors before making the final choice.