When we moved into our house in December, there was so much to do. The exterior needed to be painted, but we had to wait for the snow to melt and then the rain to finally stop.
I felt ill when I looked up at the unpainted sections of our house. The pieces of Hardiboard were divided into gridded sections separated by a metal Z-channel, which could have meant hours of time-consuming trim work.
When we finally started painting, the divided sections proved to be a bonus because it allowed us to paint one color of the two-tone design at a time. Additionally, we could paint a couple of sections in the evening, or over a couple of hours on a Saturday, without having to commit the entire weekend to working on the house.
We've now painted almost all of the front of the house in both the Turkish Coffee and Black Bean colors, but will need to get a small section of scaffolding to reach some of the top-most pieces.
Painting the siding presented a design challenge. The two-tone brown color, coupled with the silver of the UniClad siding, looked nice, but it lacked something. We decided it would be fun to bring in a little punch of color to the underside of the front awning.
Stacy found a dozen color samples and we settled on a crisp citrus green. But greens can be tricky. The color proved a bit too yellow, and neither of us was in love with it. We picked another color called Green Tease and I think we got it right.
It's a nice contrast to the neutral silver/gray and rich browns of the siding, as well as an unexpected twist when people approach the front door.
To learn more about Hammond's new house and to see photos and previous blog posts, go to www.startribune.com/newhouse. Or e-mail him at hammond@mojosolo.com.
