We found out that Sherwin Williams is going to be having a 40% off paint sale this coming weekend. Great news for us, since we are buying enough paint to do the entire interior and exterior of the house! However, its not nearly as exciting when you do not have a clue what color you want to paint.
Saturday mom and I decided that we were going to get the color figured out. I knew I wanted something either in the cream or grey family, but that is about as far as I had gotten. We made our first trip to Sherwin Williams and bought 3 exterior paint samples, 2 creams and 1 grey. The grey was called "worldly grey" and I loved the paint swatch. I honestly thought that was going to be the color. In the end, I learned that it really doesn't mean beans what color it is on the swatch. I was shocked at how different it looked on the brick! Here are the first 3 that we tried. The worldly grey is in the middle and a color called "stucco" is on the right. I can not remember what the left color was called.
It is hard to tell in a picture, but all 3 were ugly! The right was too creamy, the left almost looked white and the grey that I thought I loved, ended up being almost blue! Major strike out on round 1!
We loaded back up in the car and decided to drive around Chevy Chase (an older neighborhood in Lexington with a lot of painted brick homes) and see if we like any. My dad came along for round 2. Ben was in Casey county and missed all of the fun, I am sure he was devastated, hehe. We drove around and saw several we loved. I even looked up the phone numbers of some houses and my dad called them to see what color they used. Unfortunately no one was home at all the numbers we tried.
The real highlight/funny part of the day for me, came when my dad spotted a color he liked and my mom walked up to the house with a paint deck trying to match it! The color in this picture looks super dark, but it really was a pretty grey. Notice I am taking the picture from inside the car.
We ended up back at the paint store and got 2 more colors. We got one stroke into one color and knew it was not good. Then we tried the last one we got, called "grey area." We knew immediately that we loved it!
The color mom is painting is the one we really like.
The problem is, I am an over thinker and started wondering yesterday if we really made the right choice. I think I just realize that this is probably one of the biggest house related decisions and needs to be perfect. I have followed Darby Sticklers blog for several years and she did a complete home renovation a few years ago, including painted brick. She used a Benjamin Moore color called "Clarksville grey" and I decided I wanted to do a test spot just to double check myself. I went after school yesterday and got the sample. When I put it on, I was shocked to see that it was nearly identical to the color we picked! I am going to go back today to see it in the sunlight (it was getting dark when I went yesterday). Hopefully Ben and I both will get a chance to look and pick.
This picture is so dark, but the color on the right is the clarksville grey" and the "grey area" is on the left."
This is the paint swatch for the "clarksville grey," it does look slightly different here, but you really can barely see a difference in person.
This is what it looks like on Darbys house (main house color, not trim). Photo courtesy of www.flythroughourwindow.com. Also, this is a good picture of exactly what we have picked out for our front door. You can tell just by comparing the paint swatch to the house that they look so different, even though it is is the same color! We also have a black roof like she does, but our trim and windows will be white. Our house really needs shutters, so we are going to add those in black to match the roof.
We have until Monday to decide. Ben and I leave for vacation Thursday and do not get home until Sunday night. Hopefully we will know for sure what we want to do by Monday!
One other funny thing I wanted to be sure to post is this picture. When I walked in the house last week I could see the direct sun coming through the family room ceiling! The house had 2 skylights that we both hated and decided to removed when we put the new roof on. It was just funny walking in and being able to see the sky from the inside of your house :) I am happy to say that the skylights are covered up now.
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