A door refresher

Our beautiful "Water's Edge Blue" doors got a refreshing coat of paint from Integrity Painting Inc, Enumclaw, WA. Painter Anna and company are the best!

Anna prepping our lake-side French doors. 

Spraying the Studio doors. Love our house!

Originally a Benjamin Moore paint color (#1635), Sherwin-Williams carefully matches it for us.

our nice neighbor

3/10/15 photo by Marci

Just received a text with photo from our nice neighbor, Marci. She let me know the trim has received a second coat of paint. Looks like the blue ribbon above the belly band is yet to be painted. Thank you Marci!

3/10/15 later, same day, photo by Chris

And, later in the day, another image, this one from our builder, Chris. Railings are in on sky bridge and front deck. Thank you Chris! Note how this Sherwin Williams color, Retreat, changes with the light. I love it!

one color leads to another

It began with my niece Lanie showing me a photo of her bedroom color, BM Water's Edge 1635. She said it makes her feel happy. Happy is good so I tried to envision it for our new master bedroom and bath.   As I continue with this story, keep in mind that neither of the paint samples shown above is true to color but it will give you the idea.

As a test, I painted my current studio this lovely grayed blue and I like it a lot. But, I'm not sold on how the two large walls in the master would look in this color - I think it might be too much. How about if I use it in the bath only where each large wall space is broken with Sherwin Williams (SW) Dover White 6385 window and door trim? That leaves me still needing a color for the master bedroom walls.

Then, while playing with my SW color fan, I came across the color 6170. I love it! I do not love the name of it. As much as I loved the words Water's Edge, I dislike the words Techno Gray. Techno? Really? What is techno? Either a 1980's abbreviation of the word technological or a style of fast, heavy electronic dance music, typically with few or no vocals. Huh? I will refer to it as 6170 and try to forget the name Sherwin Williams gave it.

 

Would the master bedroom look good that color? I needed another test. My laundry room, which also serves as our back entry/mudroom will need painting before we can rent this house so I bought a gallon of SW 6170 and started painting over the gold/orange walls. Jay's first comment was that he missed a bright entry so I plan to paint the new house entry Ralph Lauren Mexico City Yellow (the color of our upstairs bathroom). I finished the laundry room this morning and both Jay and I love the color. However, when I stand in the laundry room and look into my blue studio, these two colors aren't great together for the master bedroom and bath.

SW 6170 is a little lighter and cooler than the color I planned to paint the great room so I think we will use it there with the main floor trim color, SW Navajo White 6126. Meanwhile, I'm thinking about BM Water's Edge as the exterior color for the french doors on our new house.

The results of the two tests:

BM Water's Edge 1635 - forget the master bath, use this color for the exterior of french doors. I will like the way the 12 lite panes will break up the color.

SW 6170 Blue/Green/Gray (Techno) - Great Room, main floor

SW match for Ralph Lauren Mexico City Yellow IB65 - Entry, main floor

I still need a master suite color. I'm eyeing our guest bedroom for a test!

Let the framing begin!

Good news today! Framing has begun. Our builder, Chris, encouraged us to visit often because each day there are big changes. I hope we can go take a look (and take photos) tomorrow.

A little about the Craftsman Cottage style of our house. In the beginning, we considered a very modern style - boxy with big expanses of glass and clean lines. Then we fell in love with our old favorite, the Craftsman - at least it will look like that from the outside. The design of the inside of the house began based on duplicating the kitchen remodel NCompass did for us three years ago when we thought we were going to stay in our current house forever. We love our cherry cabinets (Baywood) and our stainless KitchenAid french door refrigerator and dishwasher. I do not love my JennAir downdraft range. The gas burners are great but I have never bonded with the gas oven. My new range will be dual fuel so I'll have my electric oven back.

I'm working on selecting exterior paint colors; the interior colors will be much easier to imagine when we have walls. I knew I wanted the exterior of the house to be a sagey green and I love the Sherwin Williams color, 6207 Retreat. While looking at Pinterest photos with that color, I found a blog called Life on Sunset Hill. The blog is several years old and is about building a home in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. Unfortunately, most of the blog images are missing which prompted me to email the blog author, Cheryl. She graciously sent me personal images of the house so I could see the color. Yesterday Jay and I were in Ballard and I had a chance to see the house in person. A beautiful home and I love the color!

I just finished painting my studio Sherwin Williams 1635 Water's Edge and love it. I did this as a test to see if I would like that color for the Master bath. I think the Master bedroom will be a little lighter, maybe 1634 Santorini Blue, the same color planned for a ribbon of color detail as shown on the sketch above. The main trim color will be 6385 Dover White. Our original plan was to have the cedar shingles on the house be natural cedar color but I am struggling with the fact that they will eventually fade and turn gray so my latest plan is to just paint them the main body color. Any or all of this may change.