I had thought we would put off our house painting project until August, after the baby was born and we’d hopefully have some rhythm and routine back in our lives.  The house has lead paint that needs to be removed first, so I figured I would just head to my parents house with the baby for a few days until it was complete.  The painters however were able to accommodate and fit us in before the baby’s arrival, which was great…except it meant that I needed to get my act together and figure out colors…fast!  I used the Sherwin-Williams website and looked through houses and color swatches and came upon these.

But it’s so hard to know what the colors will look like on the house. I used their visualization program to paint the house, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the trim to go black.

{“knitting needles”}

Then I tried another one…

{“on the rocks”}

They started to look the same after a while and none stood out more than the other.  I couldn’t tell if they were too light or too dark, so I finally decided the best way to settle this was to compare the swatch to my pinterest board…a very technical approach!

I went with my top choice, knitting needles, and compared it to the exterior colors I had saved to by board.  After a few hours of deliberation, I was running out of time…so finally said “Yes!  Let’s go with that!”  I figure regardless of which color I choose, I wouldn’t really know what it will look like until the house was finished.  Any choice would be a leap of faith…Drum roll, please!

And here is our newly painted house!  It is much lighter than I had imagined, but then I was used to dark green.  At first I thought it was way too light, and I kept going back and forth on whether I made a mistake with my paint choice, but it’s really grown on me.  I like the way the green vegetation pops against the house.  With the older color, it all just blended together.  We still need to get some taller cedar trees to take the place of the bamboo, get some cool numbers for the house, and then I’d love to paint the front door a brighter color.  It almost looks daunting making your way up to the front door because it’s such a dark entry.

So for comparison, here is the house when we bought it:

Then we had the trees taken down on the right side which really let in more sun, re did the front walk, and removed the covered “thing.”

Then we resided.

And then we painted.

Unfortunately the rest on the list most likely won’t be done for a while seeing as though I am now 1 day overdue to have this baby and she could come at any moment, but it’s one more thing to cross off my 30 Before Baby list!  May be instead I will work on thinking of front door colors and photo shopping them.  I also really ought to remove the dead magnolia tree.  We transplanted it last year from my parent’s house, but it never really took…and with all of the active moles we suddenly have found ourselves with, there are more than enough dirt piles to fill the hole of the tree!