The colors

Here's the column that we painted as it will be...


We'll see... ;-)

April Update

Wow. We've really been slacking.

It's been awfully hard to want to do much; the weather finally got nice, and while we should be taking advantage of it to do house work, I don't think anyone believes it's really here and just wants to take advantage of it to have fun while we can!

We did manage to finally decide on a paint color. We ended up going with the darker color on the right and the darker, browner red.

The green/taupe/khaki color for the brick; the cream color for wood trim; the red for the eaves and prob frint door; maybe also windows. Haven't totally decided on that.

I'll have to post a pic later of the column that we mocked up to make the final decision. We wanted to try to claim the last of the depreciation, so we had to go ahead and buy the paint, even though the weather isn't quite paint worthy yet.

We were going to use the Lowe's Valspar Duramax when we planned to paint during cold weather since it goes down to 35º. But now that it looks like we can wait until summer, we decided to go with regular Valspar Ultra Premium. It still gets great reviews from Consumer Reports, and we've certainly had good luck with it so far. And it's about $50 per 5gal bucket cheaper. Bonus.

So anyway, we went ahead to try and get it before our depreciation deadline and to take advantage of what we thought was a rebate offer; it was actually only for indoor paint. But no matter-- we got a great deal anyway...

See, when we got there, the paint dude told us he was out of the stuff he needed to do 5gal buckets of one of our colors in the ultra premium and that he could do Duramax for $50 more. Well, we discussed it, and decided to just get single gallons instead; we really didn't need the Duramax. While we were shopping for other stuff, the paint guy found us and told us he'd given the paint to us for the same price as 5gals. Awesome!

We go to pick up our paint and...uh oh. There's been a misunderstanding. He thought we wanted single gallons of Duramax (which kind of defeats the purpose, but we did get fewer gallons, 8 instead of 10, and I think he must have thought we were saving money by getting less...I dunno.). They are all labeled at $29 each, which is the 5gal price, but still more than we wanted to pay. We tell him there's been a misunderstanding and without blinking, the guy says, "Oh. Ok, No problem. I'll just give it to you for the cheaper price."

And not only does he give it to us for the price of Ultra Premium, he gives us the Ultra Premium 5gal price-- $17.90 per gallon. Holy CRAP.

Did we get a wicked deal or what?!? We kept apologizing to the guy, but at that point, his alternative was to put it on the mistint table for $5, so I guess this was better all the way round.

I hope we can get to this in the next few weeks. Honestly, all my time is being sucked up by animals; the new puppy is quite a handful. I'm actually thinking about starting another blog to track her training progress. We found her wandering around our neighborhood for several days and finally took her in as the sleet started coming down, the beginning of a mega snow storm. We looked for an owner, checked for a microchip, left a description and our phone number with the Humane society. Nothing. She was underweight and had worms. She's finally settling in, but we have a long way to go with her...


She is scared of everything. She barks at people and things that are unfamiliar, and cowers and gets stock still if she's scared and thinks someone's going to handle her (the vet). She was spayed and then had a bad reaction at the suture site, so the increased vet visits and handling didn't help matters. She also doesn't really know how to share her things with us-- she gaurds her toys and balls and bones (in fact NO MORE BONES for a while-- yikes!). Thing is, I already have a fear aggressive dog, and do not want another one! So most of my time is spent with her at the park, clicker and treats in hand, teaching her to be calm around unfamiliar stuff, or playing games of trade with her toys. She's super smart and sweet, and warms up to new people pretty quickly (treats help!), so I'm optimistic.

And that's the news around here! If I do start another blog, I'll post a link to it here, for any of you dog enthusiasts. It's sort of taken over my life-- I'm reading animal behavior books and scouring training forums and researching holistic remedies for any and all problems. I never thought it would be so fascinating to me, but there you have it!

Just a little Wordless Wednesday cute...

I'm grateful...

Grateful for the great weather.

Mother Nature finally gave us a weekend worth spending outside. I spent Saturday doing some dog training outside the house and picked up a bunch of paint samples from Lowe's. Today, we chose a few and here's the result:


Of course, the colors don't translate, so it's a little pointless for me to post these pics.

The red on the left is an old color sample. The middle color is somewhat more taupe-- warmer-- than it looks in the picture. The white is perhaps not quite right, but I do like the red:



The color on the right is actually greener than it looks, and I'm not crazy about this red; also, perhaps too dark(?):


What to do? What to do.

He likes it!

He really likes it!

Adam and I both agreed that the top picture (the dark neutral gray/taupe) in our previous post was pretty darn good.

The trick now is finding that actual color in a paint swatch.

And if the weather cooperates this weekend, I can get some samples and make some decisions, buy some paint and submit some receipts to the insurance company.

Here's hoping!

Or...

Maybe something in a warm gray instead of taupe-- something to compliment the gray roof better, or will it just look cold all over...? Or green?

More photoshop!




The light gray does seem a bit too cold (obviously we'd choose a cooler off white for the trim, but still...), but I could live with it, I think...On second thought, I don't think I could.

I really like the green, but Adam has been adamant that the body of the house not be green. I photoshopped it in anyway!

And the dark gray/taupe is really nice, too... The green and dark gray seem the most bungalow-y. So many choices in such a time crunch!

Spring colors

Well, it's crunch time. We basically have to get the house painted this month. We also have to fix the hole in our ceiling.

I'm hoping that the weather will stay nice, but I can't count on it. Considering the weather and our budget, we're leaning toward using Valspar Duramax paint. It's supposed to be good down to 35º, it's acrylic so it's ok for brick, and it's got a fairly quick drying time, so they advertise that it's less likely to be affected by wet weather (within a certain time frame, obviously) or morning dew. We've had such great success with other Valspar paints that I'm willing to give this a shot.

Now. As to color...

Last time I talked about this, we had decided to scrap the idea of a brick color, due to the horrendous tuck-pointing on the front of the house.

We then moved on to this color scheme-- Adam slapped this together (with an old photo that doesn't include our new gable vent) and he is MUCH better at Photoshop than I am:

Basically, a nice taupe on the body, buff on the trim, and the red brick for the eaves.

Now, Adam hasn't seen these offenses to Photoshop that I concocted last night, but they are basically colors that we've discussed...

With a red stripe continuing across the front:


And without:

I'm torn. The taupey/beige and green and red are very Craftsman and earthy and I like them very much. But the taupey/beige and buff is so clean and simple, if a bit boring. Flowers in the spring, summer and fall, and holiday decorations in the winter go a long way to helping with that, so...Admittedly, it was hard to get the right color green and the crispness that it should have since I did such a quick, down and dirty job of mocking it up. At any rate...

I just don't know.

Edit-- clearly needs a richer green...more olive, less mint. But hopefully this is enough to get an idea...So torn.