it's not easy being green

Yes...we are THOSE people. You know, the ones that bought that ugly green house. 

[UPDATE! SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM TO SEE THE "AFTER"]

It's ok, we know that it's ugly. In fact, when we would drive by it when it was first for sale we used to say "Ew that house it really ugly". We had a change of heart about the house when we realized it was in the school district we wanted to live in, it was a ranch, had 3 bedrooms and many of the other things we were looking for in our first home. Basically, it had good bones - and we could look past the green siding, red carpet and knotty pine kitchen cabinets. 

Many people we know assumed that the green would be the first thing we would change about the house when we bought it. Even though we wanted to grab our paint brushes right away, we new that we needed to tackle the many interiors projects that were keeping us from moving in right away [removing carpet and refinishing the hardwood floors, painting all of the rooms and trim, redoing the kitchen, etc]. With a to-do list the size of ours, you can now probably understand why it's been a year and we still live in that ugly green house.

Well, with warm weather right around the corner, we're getting ready to paint. Yahoo! First off, we had to decide on a paint color...which is not an easy task. My advice for anyone looking to paint the exterior of their home: buy samples!!

The beauty about paint samples is that you can choose any color from any line and have it color matched to the brand you plan on using. We used Behr paint for everything else we did in the house and decided we would use Behr for the exterior as well (just a personal preference).

Also, it helps to see the actual paint on the house before you decide on a color. Colors look very different depending on lighting and the location they're applied to. For example, we thought some of the colors even looked different on the front of the house compared to the back of the house. We painted 6 samples onto the back of the house for initial color analysis:

[side note: the dirt patch in the picture above is the aftermath of a tree we had to remove because of this incident [3]. We recently rented a stump grinder to remove the stump and we plan on adding flower beds after the painting phase is over]

We decided that we liked color #3 the best. We wanted to find a warm grey color that also had a hint of slate blue (to pull from the color in the brick). From there...we decided to paint this color onto a piece of wood. We didn't want to get the same "zebra effect" on the front of the house. This also made it easy to look at the color from all sides of the house without having to paint it directly to the wood siding.

We propped our freshly painting chunk of wood next to the shutters on the front of the house and decided that we liked the color even more seeing it from the front of the house.

Paint color we've decided on: Behr - Anonymous

Now that we've decided on the main color...we need to pick a trim color.

Back to the samples! I'll keep you posted on what we pick.

Can't wait to paint in a few weeks and show you the final results.

See ya later, ugly green color that haunts my dreams.

Extra tips for choosing the right paint:

1) If you use samples, be sure to take your little tub back with you when you go to order your paint. They will use the identical code from the sticker to mix your color. This will insure perfect color match.

2) Paint is an easy fix - if you paint a room and you don't like the color you can easily paint over it.

It's not the end of the world and many people have repainted for the same reason. Don't feel bad.

3) Sheen can make a big difference in the appearance and durability of paint colors. 

Read this article from Real Simple to decide which type of paint is best for your project. 

UPDATE:

We've finished painting and we LOVE it.