OK, folks, it’s decision time. Big time decision time. This isn’t the minor leagues, deciding what color to spray paint a flea market knick-knack or even choosing colors for a room. Those can be undone fairly easily. Oh no, I’m venturing into a 5-7 year paint commitment. As I previously revealed, it’s time to choose colors for this:
Just to be clear, yes, we are painting the brick. (Or rather having it painted by professionals who know what they’re doing). I know brick purists will cringe, but believe me, this brick isn’t worth getting all worked up about. It’s nothing special to begin with and it needs work. There are lots of holes to fix in the mortar, and previous work of that nature has left the surface pock marked with unattractive masonry caulk. Here’s just a little taste.
I know lots of people would still say we’re nuts for ruining our maintenance free exterior, but we decided that committing to paint is worthwhile to us because: (1) It will look a thousand times better. (2) Our house has pretty modest exterior surface area, so painting again in 5-7 years won’t be that painful. (3) Besides, it probably won’t be our house by the time it needs repainting. (4) It will look a thousand times better and make us happy. We did get our realtor’s blessing (i.e., we aren’t shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of resale). And although our house is attached to five other red brick houses, there are some painted ones up the block so we won’t be out of step with the neighborhood.
Bottom line: we are very confident in our choice to paint. Choosing exactly which paint is another story. When we booked the job last month it felt like we had forever to prepare. Now June 12 is breathing down my neck and we have to commit. Gulp.
You see, I don’t have the best track record choosing paint colors. Let me show you Olympic’s Pallid, or what I call Accidental Lavender.
Your monitor may mask the true character of this supposed-to-be-gray color (much like our paint sample did), but just know that I’ve been complimented on my purple walls. Cringe. Not that there’s anything wrong with lavender, I guess; it’s just that it wasn’t what I was going for on the entire first level of our house and the stairwell and the hall and the bathroom. I get to stare at that mistake plenty.
And the nursery?
I liked Paris Mint well enough for a while, but one day it reminded me of a school cafeteria tray and I haven’t been able to shake the not-so-endearing thought since. I miss the mark on smaller jobs, too. I’m in the middle of painting a much coveted (by me) dresser, and I’m already doubting Behr’s Nocturnal Sea. I’ll have to show you that one another time. Then there was the Unfortunate Piece of Furniture, UPF for short. I don’t have any pictures, so you’ll just have to trust me that my personal concoction of orangey brown was all kinds of wrong and was part of how the credenza-ish / stereo cabinet / coffee table thing got it’s name. It was bad; couldn’t even give it away on Craigslist.
But those are all private paint misfires, only visible to the people we choose to have in our home. Our exterior colors will be out there for the whole world to see…once Google streetview gets an updated picture, that is….until then, they’re out there for our entire neighborhood to see. Ack!
The color of your house says something about you, right? It’s like your wardrobe; it’s what you’re choosing to put out there. Are you traditional? Modern? Funky? (We are not the latter.) We need a color scheme that screams “respectable and awesome people live here!” In a few years we’ll probably want it to shout “buy this house immediately!” And I’d like it not to say “this house was definitely painted in 2012 when (insert trend) was hot.”
Once we booked the job, we started cruising local neighborhoods for color inspiration. There are plenty of painted brick townhouses nearby with bones very similar (if not identical) to ours, so we figured they’d be the best way to visualize some possibilities. Of course I also looked at 3.5 million houses online. Thankfully, Hubby and I were on the same page from the start: gray for the main body. He would have considered blue (uh, no thanks); I would have considered a creamy tan (he nixed it). We quickly realized that we didn’t want something too light that could look washed out and that we want a true gray, i.e., nothing that leans blue or -gasp- purple. If anything, it could go just a little taupey or “greige.”
Then it was off to Sherwin Williams for specific colors (per instruction of our painter). Here’s what we were working with.
Fail — all too light. So Hubby went back and added these:
Better, although we immediately nixed #4 for being way too brown. For a day or so we thought we’d go with either Gray Matters (#5) or Dorian Gray (#6). Sometimes I loved Gray Matters, but it’s definitely more blue and I’m paranoid about those undertones. (So help me, I do NOT want to paint this house Accidental Periwinkle!) We almost committed to Dorian Gray (#6), but alarm bells went off when we found ourselves saying “it’s the best of the samples we have.” Danger, I said to myself, that’s a weak sales pitch for this color and it’s flimsy reasoning for a decision of this magnitude. Don’t cave just yet. Press on.
So we went back and got another sample.
Nope, too green. So we got yet another sample. (These are quart sized samples by the way, so we’re up to two gallons of rejects.)
We both loved Cityscape (#8) immediately as Hubby painted it on. It’s a darker version of Gray Matters (#5), but without the worrisome hint of blue. Perfect! Except that by the time it dried, it was clearly too dark. (It’s dry in the picture above.) So close and so frustrating! At least this showed us that we want something between our top two contenders. Unfortunately, there is nothing between them on the color swatch card. But Hubby got smart and started looking more closely at the color info, specifically the light reflective value (LRV).
On the back of the swatch card there is an LRV number for each color, which is an indication of how dark or light it is. From what I can tell, this is just a longer name for what we learned as “value” in art class. The differences in LRV from one color to the next on this card are pretty consistent, expect between Gray Matters and Cityscape. There’s a significant jump, so there is plenty of room for an in-between color. And that’s what we hope to get as sample #9 tomorrow. Please pardon the cliffhanger.
We have made other decisions though. We’re keeping the trim white and accents black, except the doors. Here’s what we’re looking at for both the front and back doors.
We’re going with Citrus (left). I know, I know, yellow and gray is hardly untrendy, thereby violating my color choice criteria. And to some people these colors will scream “we read design blogs!” (Um, guilty.) At first I was turned off by yellow+grey’s utter ubiquity in shelter blogs/mags, but then I realized that this color combo is so popular because it’s just SO good. I did try to talk myself into something else: orange, corally red, a deep lime green. But I kept coming back to yellow. Hubby likes it, too. We actually didn’t see this combo on any houses in the neighborhoods we cruised, so I let go of my ridiculous urge to be more original. (Who am I kidding with that anyway?)
I can’t fight it: Gray and yellow are meant to be together. So they will be…on our house…next week. Exactly which gray is to be decided. Crossing our fingers for lucky number nine.
[Update: see the painted house here.]
So what do you think: Is this color scheme too “of the moment”? Anybody else struggle with color selection deficiency syndrome? Or with that’s-not-really-gray paranoia? Please tell me I’m not alone.
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PS — In case I’m not the only one: greyorgray.com You’re welcome.