The Great Debate II

A lot of people think that the primed Hardie Plank siding currently on the house is the color we selected for the home and we've actually received a lot of compliments on it!  However, this was not the color we intended - it's a little nondescript and although it does match one historic color on the palette, it's not really what we were envisioning.

Although we've been spending a lot of time discussing the right color for Glenlochan, D Day has arrived and decision time is upon us.  Now that the green haze (Virginia's heavy pine tree pollen season that leaves a layer of green on everything in a matter of hours) is almost at an end, the exterior painters are ready to get started which means they need to buy paint which means we need to have a color selected.  Easier said than done.

We knew we wanted to stick to the Benjamin Moore historic color palette, but that limited our universe to 50 plus colors, so it didn't really help.  We then spent time looking at other houses in the neighborhood, researching exterior historic paint colors on the internet, and generally discussing our likes and dislikes.  We then decided we didn't want to go too dark with the color - VA is hot in the summer and dark colors hold in the heat.

Finally, we selected a few colors to purchase paint samples (overall between interior and exterior paint samples, we've dropped a couple hundred bucks "testing" the palette, money well spent!).  We carefully put samples on the back of the house:

Most of the colors we selected are in the blue and green range:

We liked them all, so we decided to "live with" the colors for a week to see if any stood out.  Rob also asked everyone who stopped by for their opinions.  As you can imagine, everyone had a different opinion!  Imagine my surprise when I came back a week later (arriving after dark) and woke up the next morning to find this on the back of the house:

In a momentary lapse, Rob bought a sample of non-historic habanero red - which I quickly dubbed the clown house!  Fortunately, after living with the other colors for a week, we both came down to the same color.

 It's not a true blue, it's not a true green, but it's a rich wonderful blue-green hue.  Added bonus number one - the painter said he had never seen a house that exact color...of course, I'm loving the unique aspect of that.  Added bonus number two - while in the demo phase of the project, we had uncovered sections of the home in the front that we believe to be the original color of Glenlochan - at some point, the home was painted a dark brown, but this layer was actually older than the dark brown.  Here's a few shots we recorded when we uncovered this color a year ago:

Although on-screen these don't appear to be a close match, they actually are - so the color we selected will actually restore the home, as closely as possible, to its original color.