After a couple of months of procrastination, and after a year of frequently pawing through literally about 200 color chips, I have finally gone out and bought six different colors of paint (plus primer) to start the process of painting the exterior of our Victorian house. I am starting by painting the detached garage (which was built in the 1970's and is only 8 feet tall, so is a manageable project to do in a month or so). I spent yesterday scrubbing it down with TSP, and then today I was up on a ladder priming the soffits. Now my arms are so sore I can't lift them past my shoulder level. I can hardly wait until tomorrow when I put the finish coat on the soffits and start priming the clapboards....my arms will probably end up permanently frozen reaching for the sky.
The garage is small enough that if I don't like the color combinations, I can adjust the color combo without too much stress involved in repainting. The next two summers will be spent painting the main house (yes, I think it will take me three years to paint the entire thing...the house is big, plus it needs clapboard repairs and other sundry exterior repairs done before painting).
The current colors on the house and garage are almost unrelentingly different shades of grey. The house currently looks something like the rendition below (the lone tiny bits of color, magenta and teal, lead me to believe the house was last painted in the early 1980's when those were popular decorating colors). The paint was poorly applied, and is all peeling and the entire house is in very bad need of painting not just because of the dreary grey color scheme:
The new house colors will be a more traditional Victorian palette in that the colors will be considerably darker, and considerably more colorful than just a bunch of different shades of grey. The only non-traditional part of the color palette I have chosen is the dark slate blue for the main color...I don't think that color actually existed in any color-fast exterior paint in the Victorian era (but maybe I'm wrong about that). I used Xfig to render an approximation of an example of my color combo here, and in fact all the colors are somewhat different from what you see here (it is next to impossible to accurately render a color chip accurately using the color palette options in Xfig). Also, there are a total of 9 or 10 colors that will be used on the house (not just the 8 shown here). Our neighbors were shocked at the number of colors I have already bought, and I think they are thinking I am about to tart up our house like some of those pink/teal/rose/mauve Victorian confections (nightmares?) you sometimes see. I've tried to reassure them that the house will be dark slate blue, and the rest of the colors are basically shades of olive, brown, creamy beige, buff, brick red, and a butter colored white. They still look at me like they think I am about to ruin the neighborhood. They probably think I have the same color sense as our neighbor a few doors down who painted his Victorian house various shades of mustard, with aqua and hot pink accents. He proudly tells people he picked the color scheme himself ("no way...really?").
I for one like my color choices. And I used to be a custom fabric dyer, so I have quite a bit of prior experience in color theory (speaking of which, at some point I need to make a few quilts to use up the yards and yards of hand dyed fabrics I have in my attic...). Probably the neighbors will like the color palette too once the garage is finished. If they don't, well too bad. I am not about to paint everything grey again. I'll just have to put up with them talking about my taste in house colors like they talk about Mr.Mustard/Aqua/Pink down the street...
