Monday 8 September 2014

CURB APPEAL - POST THREE

Now that God has shipped us back to our first home, we have some work to do!

Our house has cedar shingles which I am conflicted about.  On the one hand I'm not a fan of the look of vinyl siding.  On the other hand vinyl siding has zero maintenance which is kind of awesome.  Hubby and I had been complaining to each other because a previous owner had painted the shingles rather than leaving them stained.  We were worried that was going to make upkeep a far bigger job than necessary.

And back to having work to do.

Those shingles needed to be painted, people.  Or the house needed new siding.  Cost wise painting is the better option and once we decided to do it - go big or go home, right?  We chose a different colour.  A waaaay different colour.

You may remember old red/brown before?


We never felt strongly one way or the other about this colour.  Mainly we felt strongly we didn't want to paint.  You know how it is.  But when you're going to be painting it anyway and the world is your oyster?  Let's make a dramatic change to the neighbourhood!!

My advice when you're changing the exterior of your home?  Drive around your neighbourhood!  We took a drive and paid attention to the colours we did and didn't like, as well as the colours directly around our house.  There are a lot of gray homes within direct sight line of ours so although we liked gray, we had to eliminate it.  As we did the neighbourhood tour we realized we liked muted colours best - muted blues, greens, yellows, creams, etc.  Then we went to Home Depot and below was our jumping off point.  We painstakingly selected a bunch of colours and then went to the kitchen section where we could put them on a counter (that wasn't surrounded by thousands of other distracting paint colours) and analyze them in peace.


Hubby wasn't feeling any kind of blue, which as you can see above, eliminated more than half of the colours we had chosen.  Neither of us was feeling the cream.  That left us with a few gray/green options.  And then choosing darker vs lighter was a challenge.  

We are planning on replacing our front door next year (one thing at a time) so I thought we should head to the door section and compare with wood tones.  I was happy with either of the greens against "Caramel" or "Medium Oak" pretend wood.  (Don't you just hate pretend wood, though.  I know the fiberglass doors must be more efficient but really.  Pretend.  Wood.)  And maybe I am the only person who has ever taken paint samples to compare against doors because we were asked my multiple employees if they could help us.  They seemed confused when I said, "Nope!  Just checking out this paint colour against the door colours!"  I dunno.  It seemed logical to me.



Stay tuned for the finished product.  Spoiler alert - we chose urban nature.  One side of the house is done but I want to wait until we finish the front before I share!

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