Choosing the Perfect Paint Colors

I think that we have finally made a decision about the house and door color after many, many samples and paint swatches.   Choosing the right paint color for the house is such a big decision, and it’s so easy to pick one that looks good on the paint chip or on a small patch of the house but then turns out to be not quite the right shade for the whole house.  I was so happy to have help from my mom while she was in town- it’s always helpful to have extra input.

The colors shown above are our finalists for the house, trim, porch, and door color.  Everything is getting a fresh coat of paint, even the recently painted porch.  Here are some photos of the samples (painted after the huge rain)…

The one that we’re going with for the siding is the middle color (32), and the trim color is to the left of it.  I don’t have a photo of the shutter and accent color, but it will be a very dark brown and will go on the shutters of course and on the inside part of the window casing.

The new and improved porch color, which will look beautiful with the eggplant door color (I hope).  I really like this olive color with the stone!

These were the original three door color choices, but we decided to tone down the purple a little bit with some white.  I really like the red, but I think there are too many red doors in our neighborhood already so we’re going to go with something a little different.

Here is the lightened purple.

I might play around with the shade some more, but you can get the idea.  We’ll see what people think since we live in a historic area and most people stick to neutral colors with a red or black door.  It’s only a door so I thought it would be a good spot to use a fun color.

That’s it for today.   We’re getting our new roof sometime this week if the clouds stay away and then they’ll be taking down the green vinyl siding and assessing the condition of the wood underneath after the roof.  I really hope the original wood is okay.  I’m not making any bets, though.

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Rainy Painting

I was really hoping to get my Mom’s help while she is in town with the paint color for the exterior of the house, but it seems that the sudden downpour and non-stop rain in the forecast are putting a cramp in our plans.   The first day that she was here (over 10 days ago) we talked about starting the color testing process, but of course we are just getting to it on the day before she leaves and it’s pouring.   I’m not surprised- this is my usual luck.

Yesterday we went to Sherwin Williams and picked out tons of samples, and when I say tons I mean every beige/tan/off-white/cream/brown color available in the store.

Here are half of the samples, the other ones were left in the car and I’m not running out in the rain to get them.

We went home and picked out five that seemed like they would work with the stone.  There were three lighter colors that we liked for the siding and two darker colors for the trim.  Here are the little $5 pots that we got from Sherwin Williams- they are a great deal for testing out colors.

The weather outside is horrible, but we decided to work with it and do some sample patches anyway.

We ran out really quickly and got soaked while painting.  I don’t really know how productive all of this is since the rain washed some of it away, but it’s good enough to get the idea.

It’s hard to see in this photo, but I think I like the color of the bottom part of the window sill the best for trim.  All the lighter colors we got looked really similar when we got them home- it almost looked like we ordered three pots of the same color.  Maybe when and if they dry, they’ll look different.

What do you guys think?  Darker on the trim?  All the tans and beiges are starting to run together at this point….  The door and porch colors are in the car so I’ll post the ideas for those in a bit.   Our siding was ruined in the hail so the insurance is paying to have it removed and (hopefully) to have the siding fixed up and painted since our neighborhood doesn’t allow vinyl siding.  Our roof materials arrived a couple of days ago so that’s first on the list.

Hope you all have a great 4th!!!  I really  hope the rain stops so we can enjoy the fireworks and the neighborhood dog costume contest!  :)