Trim Color: First Look

I finished putting 2 coats on the siding of the bay window bump-out and started in on the trim. I had talked about using the Livable Green as a trim color because I now had 4 gallons laying around due to the color change of the second story. The problem with that is that I think it is too light for the second story. I want the windows to really stand out.

Then yesterday before I even started doing trim my neighbor asked me, “So are you going to do light green trim on the bottom and dark green trim on the top?”. Ding! The light bulb went on over my head. I turned to him and said, “Hey, that’s exactly was I was thinking about doing”. It’s a good idea even if it isn’t mine. I’m sure it would have come to me even if he didn’t say it so there’s no point in me telling anybody outside of Blogdom that it wasn’t my intention all along. That is, of course, unless it comes out looking bad, then I can blame it on the idiot neighbor.

Here are some shots. The contrast between the Livable Green and the Clary Sage still doesn’t show up as well in the photos as it does in real life. At least not to me. I must admit there was a lot of trepidation about this color scheme but the more it progresses the more I like it.



The original plan was to leave the sashes red but now I’m not sure I like it. I’m thinking about doing the sashes with the Clary Sage to give it a little contrast over the Livable Green window casing. I will keep the red on the crown molding between the first and second story, the water table, and crown molding just below the soffit. I’m also thinking about a very dark green for the skirting. That will make 5 colors which is enough. I thought briefly about doing something else with the window sashes but I’m hesitant to introduce any more color. You know how Google has their corperate slogan, “Don’t Be Evil”. Well, my slogan for the house is, “Don’t Be Offensive”. It is easy to get carried away with color when you have so may different surfaces to paint.

To sum up the trim color scheme, here is a close-up of the corner. You pretty much get all the elements in this one shot. You will notice I’m missing one of those big corner brackets. This is the corner where the addition was and it was removed when they attached the addition to the house. I had to re-shingle that whole corner there, and most of what you see in the picture to the left of the corner was redone as well after the addition came down. I had to cut and nail almost 800 octagon shingles.



So the plan is this: The window casing on the first story is Livable Green (in the picture it has one coat on it). The window sash and the corner bracket will be Clary Sage. The sunburst on the corner bracket will have a dark green background (already painted) and the burst itself will be the livable green. All of the other sunburst, both upstairs and down stairs will be the same Livable Green with a dark green background. The second story window casing and sashes will be dark green. The dark green I’m referring to will be the same green on the first floor siding. And finally, I want to paint the repeating floral carvings around the top of the house Livable Green as well.

The big problem with this plan is that because I hadn’t intended on painting the sashes I didn’t do any prep on them. A lot of the sashes need help, especially the second story ones, so I will probably just paint them as is and then repaint them when I over-hall the windows and some time in the distant future.