It’s May and that means it’s time to think about the long list of projects that have been put off until Summer: finish the floors, redo the yard, paint our dining/family room, build a bed, and have the exterior of our house painted. Summer is always shorter and busier than I expect it to be so, realistically, many of these projects will be pushed back even further. Painting the house, unfortunately, isn’t one of those. Stuff is cracking and peeling and generally looking bad.

This is a bummer because it would be great to focus/spend on more seemingly immediate projects and hold off on painting for another year or two. But mostly it’s lame because I can’t get fired up about a color. The current peachy color (below) isn’t one that I’d ever think of choosing, but I really like it. It’s the color of 90’s stucco suburban housing tracts. Unexpectedly, I love how it cheerfully glows on my older house. I want to spend some more time with it. But probably not enough time to paint it this color again. Any ideas out there? Anybody???

       

The only variables that are set in stone are: 1. our roof is slate colored (and is newer so will be that color for awhile) 2. our front door will be orange 3. we have a low rock wall in pinky and white hues (seen above) that you can’t really see from the street but it’s there and 4. the sun beats down on the front of our house all day and I worry a dark color will soak up heat and/or fade. Beyond that I’m stumped.

I did some (extremely rough) mock-ups of some colors we are considering below. The snow looking stuff on the ground is where we are hardscaping over our dead lawn with rocks. All the random dots represent future plants.

As you can see, I’m leaning towards muddy browns, grays or greens. But I don’t love any of those colors. Actually, what I’d love is a black house. But the sun issues mentioned above worry me. Surprisingly, I am loving white too and since our landscaping will be more desert modern than tropical water sucking jungle, this makes sense. But white is scary because it could totally be boring.

I’m way into these:

source

source

source

I don’t like how semi-permanent this decision is. I’m so lost on this one and need to make some decisions. Any ideas?