To Paint a House

The house needs painting.
Around this time of year I begin dreaming of paint colors. Especially when we walk through the neighborhood and I notice several houses that appear recently painted and how fresh and pretty they look.

It will be a while before our next renovation project can begin, so in this dreamy state of mind I google exterior paint colors and find that the paint manufacturers, like Sherman Williams, have made great progress with the house painting tools on their web sites. Better Homes and Gardens has a good one as well. You can pick a house style (modern, cottage, Victorian, etc) and select from a wide palette of colors, drag and drop them on the house siding, trim, accent.

I'm going with the classic Craftsman trio of a green siding, a creamy trim and ox blood accent. I've thought about a cooler color combo, something in blues and grays, to pick up on the river rock hues, but the cool hues just don't color my dreams like the earth ones do.

My house may be a Sears kit house. It's a 1 and 1/2 story Craftsman bungalow measuring 30' wide x 50' long. Since my house was divided up into 4 rental units sometime in the 1950's, I haven't quite figured out what its original floor plan was. I don't think it's changed all that much but there just must have been a fireplace at one time and where was the stairway to the second floor? I'm going to continue my search of the online catalogues to see if I can find it.

A trip to Home Depot this afternoon yeilded us a very nice selection of colors. I got a couple of greens and creams to try out. We'll slop them on the side of the house tomorrow to see how they look. I've already put a call into my guy, Jesus, to see if he's available to take on the job. He's really busy though, and I may have to look elsewhere.