My house was a fleshy-peach color when I bought it. And now that I think of it, so are the counters in the kitchen - what was the previous owner's obsession with flesh-tones?!? Along with the flesh exterior, it had an accent color on the shutters and trim that was somewhere between lavender and gray. In other words, my house was ugly.
Such a sad looking house.
I've always wanted a yellow house. But during a year of rubbernecking at peoples' paint jobs as I drove through neighborhoods (I'm still surprised I never hit a parked car...), I wasn't so sure yellow or any light color paint would look good on stucco. The very front of the house is wood where an addition was put on the living room, but the rest of the house and the garage are stucco. And light colored stucco just looks dirty and cheap to me.
But I REALLY wanted a yellow house. So one weekend I found two houses in my neighborhood that were yellows I liked. I went to Home Depot and grabbed a bunch of yellow swatches. Then drove back to these houses, ran up to the corner of each and shuffled though all my swatches trying to find a match, all the while waiting for the owners to come out and ask what the hell I was doing. Luckily no one busted me, although I did get strange looks from some dog walkers. And I wasn't that quick about this - first I would check the swatch on a corner where the light was hitting, then I'd go to a corner in the shade. I'm serious about my color matching!
I then went back to Home Depot, because as I've said before, I can never go just once in a day, and got about 8 samples of yellow paint, plus two dark brown and gray colors. At this point I had already hired a painter even though I didn't have the colors picked yet. I needed the deadline pressure because I knew it would only take him about 3 days to prep the house.
He painted the samples up on the side of the garage while I was at work and when I got home, I was not too surprised to see that ALL the yellows looked terrible. I wish I had taken a picture! I distinctly remember one looking like lemon pie filling and another looking like egg yoke. I didn't like the darks either, but they looked better on the stucco.
Now I knew I had to go dark and luckily there are two houses that I pass by every time I go pick up my neighbor Matt to go surf that had similar dark color schemes that I really liked. So I once again did my creepy-neighbor paint matching technique with some swatches to determine what color their houses were, then told my painter Joe to go for it.
Here is the final result (please ignore my giant slip and slide in the front yard; I was trying to kill all the bermuda grass in preparation for landscaping which I still haven't done).
I went with a brown, red and white scheme. I love my red shutters! And the brown is a nice chocolate mousse brown that's not too dark or too light.
You might also notice that the broken cement and brick walkway next to the driveway was replaced with a cement walkway that my friend Max did for me. I also had him remove the big bush by the front door and build a brick planter. Eventually I'll put some plants in it!
I also had Max do some work on the back deck. I'd always wanted to tear off the front rails and extend the steps to open up the deck. I think it's a nice improvement. Here is the before and after of the back of the house (which also shows off the paint job nicely):
As always, for those interested in cost associated with home improvement, painting the exterior of my 1300 square foot home plus the detached garage and deck was about $3600 for labor and paint.
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