Mid summer I took a trip to Lowes and picked out light blue for the body, dark blue for the shutters, and white trim. The nice thing about white trim is that my white gutters and white vinyl windows won't stick out like a sore bum.
I really liked the light blue. Bright and different, as it seems everybody paints their house some shade of beige or white. Being bold with paint isn't really my thing, so I kind of agonized over the light blue for a while before finally pulling the trigger on it.
See, I'm of French-Canadian genetic stock. When I was a kid, and if you grew up in or near New Hampshire towns with a large population of French-Canadians like Nashua, Manchester, Somersworth or Rochester then you will know what I am talking about, it was the running family joke that whenever we would see a house painted purple or pink or bright blue, we would say, "oh they must be French". I don't like being the butt of a joke (even if I am the only living breathing French-Canadian-American some people down here have ever seen), and I most certainly don't like being the butt of my own jokes.
My dad painted the shutters on the house in Dover (not a town with many French-Canadians by the way) that we lived in when I was a kid pink and he never lived it down.
So anyway, enough about my history of paranoia. I didn't like the first shade of light blue, too light, so after putting 2 coats of that on the entire shed, I went and bought a darker shade of light blue. This is what is on it now and it is also what I've started painting the big house with. The front wall of the shed has 6 coats of paint on it including the primer. Crazy.
The doors I decided to paint the dark blue that the shutters will be. Alas, I didn't quite like that shade of blue either. Too bright. So after three coats of blue on the doors, I switched it up and got a darker shade. I like it better and will go with it.
This a picture of the doors with one half the darker blue and the other half the brighter blue. The darker side is still wet at this point soo...
Here it is after it dried. I am not totally down with the idea of having dark blue doors. I'll get used to it. Plus, I don't know what other color I would paint them besides white, maybe beige but that would be too many colors on the house I think.
14 comments:
I would use these three colors... http://www.nikibrown.com/designoblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/house-colors4.jpg
there's a house in south berwick that's pretty much those colors (bright green and brown and red).
i like the light blue, not a huge fan of the darker one though
YIKES! and again i say, YIKES!
the blue is a little darker in person than it appears in the pictures too. i think it will look great on the shutters, but like i said, i'm not sold on it as a door color yet. i can at least live with it for a while.
Saying there aren't many French-Canadians in Dover is like saying there aren't many Confederate sympathizers in Chester.
I like the dark blue a lot, not hugely crazy about the light blue....I'd probably do a shade darker than it is.....so the white jumped out just a wee bit more.
but that's just me.
There is this new house built in the town I work in, and they did this awesome color of blue, kinda slate blue-ish...and it is gorgeous! Maybe I'll get you a picture if i can. :)
~hl~
there aren't many. not as a proportion of the overall population like the four cities i mentioned. dover was primarily irish.
for some purely anecdotal evidence, while i lived in dover, went to the schools there, participated in little league and cub scouts, i was the only gagne i knew. can't even really remember any other french surname. not even a gagnon.
juxtapose that with my high school yearbook from somersworth and two thirds of the kids in my class had a last name with two possible pronunciations.
heatherlynn, i think i would have preferred a slightly darker blue too, but i'm not changing my mind again :)
remember the huge pink and purple house on Maple street that looked kind of like a castle? As kids we would make fun of it, and my dad would tell us to stop because "did we know how much it costs to paint a house that big? maybe they can't afford to fix it." Then they re-painted it a slightly brighter shade of pink.
A lot of people paint their doors the same color as their trim and it never looks quite right. I really like it when they do it to their GARAGE doors.
If you MUST paint your front door that color, put a dark screen in the screen door and it will look ok.
oh, honey, I don't blame you...I wouldn't want to either!
Good luck, it'll look great! Look forward to the after pictures.
Oh, and I learned something today, as I don't know any french canadians, I had no idea they were such flamboyant house painters! I say yay! Why be normal and plain...? Color was made to be dabbled in, right? :)
~hl~
"A lot of people paint their doors the same color as their trim and it never looks quite right. I really like it when they do it to their GARAGE doors."
I don't follow.
Its an awful ugly stereotype and I shouldn't have mentioned it because I am facilitating the continuation of persecution against my peoples.
i never knew/heard the house color thing and being french canadian before either and i've known a few. now, i'll look at house paint a little differently. -heidi
maybe it was something my parents made up
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