Siding Post 4: Paint Color choices… and I suck at caulking

That’s right, I started off with talking about pretty things, but I’m gonna go through the back story before we talk about paint colors. Skip to the bottom if you want.

Making the back pretty (for real) is my next step! The bay on the back of the house is also the part of the house that I care the absolute least about having pretty, but once you’re dealing with uglies like water infiltration you’ve gotta do it all.

So the siding is done! I called my roofer and told him I’m ready for him to redo the fascia and silver coat the roof. I want the second part of this done, but doing all of it would be nice. He said he’d come by and see what the place looks like and hear what I want him to do (I guess because it’s been so long he’s forgotten what I paid for). And then that evening I saw him going into my neighbor’s house. He said he was just getting a cup of tea. So I waited for him. Later I knocked next door and found out that he forgot about me and went home. Whoops! Anyways, he should remember me soon, I hope. He’s a good roofer. But aside from that pretty fun little fail, I failed at caulking, and left lumpy goop all over my siding, which I then had to take off with a window scraper. Arg. Here it is, scraped clean. Sorta clean.

And I’ve tried to conquer the caulk but it’s still winning.

Now what’s special about the siding this week? All the clapboards are up! On one side we had to cut one into a wedge! Yep, this is different ends of the same board.

The trim around my windows makes them look original! And… due to a misorder, I was 2 feet short of the back band I needed, but they’re getting a new shipment soon and I’ll have that teeny detail complete before long… I think! This is exciting. Here are some photos of what it looks like now. Remember that the torn up imitation formstone asphalt fascia and the satellite dish aren’t long for this world.

And I’ll do a more thorough before/after later, but we need at least one reminder of the bad old days.

Back 3

So for now, paint colors the big dilemma, even though I’m currently only ready to paint part of the place. Later, when I have time and/or money, I’m re-coating all the stucco to make it look clean and cover the scars from moving windows around. Color wise, I think I want the beadboard some shade of blue. Nothing garish, but a subtle but cheery light blue to remind you of the sky you can’t see from my back yard. Remember my beadboard? It still has bits of tar paper nailed to it, but looks better than what used to be there even pre-restoration.

With all the white aluminum and PVC I’ve bought, I’m married to white trim. That leaves the siding and stucco. They must be very light because I want my house to reflect sunlight down to the first floor. I’m leaning toward painting both light grey, or making the stucco grey and the siding white. If they are both grey I will have to paint the stucco to get the colors to match. Some say this is a terrible thing to do, but this area is full of houses 60-100 years old with painted stucco and they’re all fine. I’ll just have to use the right kind of paint. Luckily, they’re both cement based materials and the same kind of paint is ideal for both if I go that route.

So big question: grey siding and white stucco? Grey stucco and white siding? Grey both? Or do you have other ideas? I’m open to anything at this point, as long as you don’t make me change my white trim. The color of the beadboard is also open to debate, so give me your ideas!