I've been talking to a landscaper for months about re-doing my huge front yard, leaving spaces for parking and removing the aging azaleas that for most of the year look like scruffy, oversized green weeds. I told him I thought it was time to put a little color on the house, and he said to get the house painted before he comes to plant a garden, because the painters invariably will pour excess paint all over the beautiful new plantings.
I got bids from three painters and took the cheapest. Painting the captain's house is no picnic, with all its original, darling casement windows ("Just like England!" exclaimed my British friend Pat when she first saw them. "I've never seen anything like them in the States."), but this pair of painters -- an industrious husband and wife team -- did an excellent job in just over one week.
I wanted to bring a little authentic bungalow beige to the house, sort of a creamy tone, and they brought me a huge book of color chips to choose from. I didn't want tan, I didn't want that pinky tone beige sometimes gets, so I selected something from the yellow family called "Rich Cream" and went with it, never seeing a bigger sample.
Imagine my surprise when the house came out yellow! Serves me right for not being more careful. Well, there are worse things than yellow, and this is kind of a creamy yellow, not exactly how it looks in the picture. It changes with the time of day. But in direct sunlight, which beams on the house almost all day long, it does look yellow. My friend Aaron, a professional painter, tells me that cream sometimes turns to butter. I can accept that.
Aaron helped me pick up the new wicker furniture for the porch yesterday. This is very comfortable there, and helps tone down the yellowness. I have no doubt the new landscaping will too, and so will just a little time. If the yellow doesn't fade much, at least I'll get used to it.
3 comments:
It looks fine to me; much better than those monuments to upper middle class excess across the way. About the windows not being seen much in the South makes me go "hmmmm". I've seen them in many older home and a few newer ones as well, but not in any of those blocky, cumbersome three story dwellings that fill the lot to near overflow. The windows let the outside world inside, or let the inside world see out. Nice. And yellow; what could be better than the imitation of the life giving force of our planet. The cottage look as seen at Disney is not where your house is at; it's the Captain's house in Fairhope by your word, including a ghost.
Did you have the attic fan painted?
Bananas, no, I didn't think of that. It's a work of art as it is.
Post a Comment