Petch House Green

I played Mad Scientist today and mixed up a new color for the house. As you may or may not remember I had purchased 5 gallons of Livable Green from Sherwin Williams only to discover that I couldn’t live with it in any capacity other than highlights for the gingerbread. Five gallons is enough to highlight every stick of gingerbread in the county.

I first tried to use it as a base coat under the Clary Sage but I wasn’t happy with the results. The second coat should cover all imperfections in the first coat. When I looked closely at the Livable Green/Clary Sage combo it was apparent that both coats were of two similar but very different colors. It’s not something you would notice from the sidewalk, but it would bug me. There was no way I was going to paint the whole house like that. So what to do with all the Livable Green. At around $35 a gallon that is close to $140 worth of paint.

After seeking the counsel of friends, family, neighbors, and strangers on the street I decided to try and change it to a different green and use it on the gables. The big problem all along with the Livable Green was that it was just too light. When up against the other greens it looked more like primer than green paint. It just didn’t fit the color scheme.

So I went back to SW and bought an empty 1 gallon paint can and a paint mixing attachment for the drill. I first poured off 1 gallon of pure, unadulterated Livable Green that I will use on the remaining gingerbread on the house. One gallon is enough to do the whole house 5 times. I then set out changing the color.

If you’ve ever seen the machine that adds pigments to paint at the store you know that it takes very little pigment to color paint. I knew that this would be a different experience because that is pure pigment they are adding. It is very concentrated. Still, I needed to be careful. I got a piece of cardboard and laid out several “swatches” of Livable Green. I would use these so I could do numerous side-by-side comparisons to the new color as it progressed.

I used the Basil (first floor siding color) as the pigment. I started by adding maybe a quarter of a cup and mixing well. No change. I added a half cup and mixed. No change. I added a cup or more and mixed. I started to see a subtle change but it still wasn’t enough. I probably added my basil “pigment” 2 or 3 more times more until I came up with a color I was satisfied with. I wanted something darker than the Livable Green, but not as dark as Clary Sage. Here’s what I ended up with.

From top to bottom that is Livable Green, Petch House Green, Basil, and Clary Sage.


I have about 3 gallons of new The Petch House Green and it will be solely for the fish scale shingles on the gables. I primed the first gable today and it took about a pint to cover the shingles. Three gallons will be more than enough to put several coats on all three gables and have left over for touch-ups should I need it. The real test will come tomorrow when I actually put the paint on the shingles.