Old Brick House: Color Reveal

Although the blog has been quiet lately, things are really happening at the brick house. This project has really consumed our summer, but the progress has been steady and the house is really taking shape.

My brother, Brandon, has been working on our old windows, scraping off old glaze and putting on new, fitting them for the colder months ahead. We went ahead and replaced the windows in the attic because they were not worth trying to save. However, we will repair the rest of the windows throughout the home. The cost of replacement windows for this house is way out of our league. The old windows, once repaired, look and work great, and we don't lose any of the original character.

Picking out the color for the window trim and the trim around the roof was extremely difficult for me. I have a really hard time making decisions, especially ones that seem permanent. And even though paint is not permanent, we don't want to be redoing it any time soon. We initially went with Dover White, which is a creamy white color. It looked alright, but I didn't love it. It was too much contrast with the old, worn brick, and it looked a little sterile to me. So, after weeks of trial and trips back and forth to Sherwin Williams, we have finally settled on the colors for the exterior. The trim color is called Colony Buff, and it looks like heavy cream. It really accents the brick nicely and also looks great with the windows and roof. We originally thought we'd use a grayish green or blue to paint the peak accent pieces, but after some thought we decided that would be too dark. We mixed some Dover White with Colonial Buff and came up with our own color. It really blends well with the heavy cream color and it looks pretty classy. I can now say that I love it.

Jack had to do some repair work on one area where the roof leaked for years, but other than that it's in decent shape. Cleaning, priming, and painting the trim and corbels have really given them new life.