Today I have a tidbit of an update for you.  This is about the middle phase of messing with our house color.  I previously did a good deal of thinking about how to take our current 5 gallons of exterior paint and make it more interesting than the pale beige it had been.  I thought and thought and considered.  But you know, sometimes us introverts just need to exchange actual words with a human being instead of pondering silently.

I went to the Home Depot where we bought the paint and asked the man at the paint counter how I could achieve what I wanted.  Apparently I can just bring it back and they will tint and tweak it in the direction I want, for free.  Hey!  That was easy!

While I was there, I decided to get two samples of paint in a color that was similar to, but darker and more muddy/grayed, than our current paint, and then have them tweak our sandy beige paint toward whichever one of those looked better.  If I just brought in the 5 gallon bucket of paint and said, “Make it grayer and darker” I could be misinterpreted and end up with the wrong undertones or something else I didn’t want.  It seemed like this would be a more controlled way to experiment.  I like experiments, but I might like control a little better.  [snicker]

I sampled Behr’s Fortress Stone (top) and Unmarked Trail (bottom) on a few spots around the house.

Fortress Stone actually does look cold and forbidding, like a castle dungeon.  It appeared gray-green on the paint chip, but on my house it took on purply tones in the sunshine besides looking harsh.

Unmarked Trail is muuuuch more what I was going for, and so I decided to use that one as my goal when I took the paint in for tinting.  It’s gray, but it’s soft about it.

I was lucky enough to get a paint counter employee with a 20 years’ experience badge on her orange apron when I took my paint in to be re-tinted.  She was able to analyze the amounts of pigments in the original paint color and then add what it needed to get as close to the Unmarked Trail color as possible.  I also asked her to darken it just a smidge.

Here is the goal color, Unmarked Trail, on the top of the sample patch, and the slightly darkened version of it that we got by tinting the 5 gallons of beige paint.  I think it’s a slightly more true gray (less green) than Unmarked Trail, but it is pretty darn close and I think it’s  going to look GREAT once we get it up.

We will then have a black roof, red door, white trim and a gray house.   Classic, slightly cottagey, but also elegant.

This is the look I’m going for:

Source: google.com via Julie on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Julie on Pinterest

And now, we just need to borrow the sprayer, clear in front of the walls, and paint the house.  I think we can do that before August is through… fingers crossed!