shades of gray : choosing exterior paint colors

Picking exterior paint colors is tough.

It's so much commitment.

Besides, do you have any idea how many shades of gray there are?

There are brown-grays, green-grays, gray-grays, and blue-grays.

There are whites with hints of gray.

There is 'greige.'

Below you can see just some of the more than a dozen colors we painted on the exterior of the house we are renovating.  The house was built in 1859 and needs a lot of work...but we love it.  We want to do whatever work we can while we try to sell our current home.   The first step we decided to take is painting the exterior, as it is currently the pink color you see at the top of the photograph:

But even more important than the aesthetic reason, we need to paint and apply a sealant is because there is evident water damage on some parts of the inside walls due to water seeping in through some areas of the brick exterior.

There are a lot of  historic brick homes in our neighborhood - part of why we love it!

This is part of our rusty iron fence.  We are forbidden to take it down {historic society policy} but maybe someday we'll refinish it.  Very low on the priority list!

Here is Baby hanging out on the front stoop, ready to paint!

 The house came with this beautiful trailing phlox:

 "Hmmm...how can I get the cover off of this brush?"

Cormac's solution to everything:  put in mouth.

All in all, it was a productive day.  We decided on a base color - now just have to pick some accent colors.  I even got some gardening in over there...

with a red, itchy rash all over my arms to prove it!  Eek!

{Clearly there were some weeds or bugs that didn't like being disturbed.}

More on the house painting project to come!

But for now...

Happy Easter!

He is risen!

g