Wait…What Color is Our Brick?

We bought this house because we LOVED it!  The fact that we BOTH loved it was a big enough sign that this was definitely meant to be our “forever” home.  There was really only one thing about the house that we didn’t love……..the exterior.

I’m sure you’re thinking, then why did you buy it?  Well, as my mom always told me, you can’t and shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover.  I mean we didn’t hate the outside appearance; we just weren’t in love with it.  It just didn’t really have that eye-catching “curb-appeal”, which is probably due in large part to the fact, that I really wanted a red brick house and this one was brown.  However, the inside of the house really overshadowed my feelings about the exterior; and as those of you who are homeowners know, you rarely if ever get everything on your house “want” list at the house price you are willing to pay.  So we compromised; hoping that with a little landscaping we could achieve the look we wanted even if there was nothing we could do about the color of the brick…….or so we thought.

We moved in to the house in March, and it snowed on moving day.  Which was AWESOME!  We waited for warmer temps to tackle that “curb appeal” project.  When late spring came, we put out some mulch (which was a great low-price improvement), and we decided the shutters needed to be repainted due to fading paint.

We’re usually the pick up a paint brush and get to work ourselves kinda people, but have you seen how high those second story windows are?  Yeah, I’m so not climbing a ladder that high- not happening – nope – never!  So, we just happened to know of a great painter who is also a friend and hired him to get the job done.  But first, I got to thinking, since we’re hiring a painter, hmmmmm, maybe we should try painting the shutters a different color, and oh by the way, let’s go ahead and repaint the front door while we’re at it.

The hubs was totally on board with the “color change” idea, and now we were brainstorming trying to decide what color to paint.  With the help of a friend, who’s a contractor and a bone fide “color expert” when it comes to exterior paint selections, we decided to go with a light blue-ish grey for the shutters and a basin blue for the front door.  I mentioned to him that I wished the brick was red instead of brown, and he said with the undertones in the brick, if we used blues and greys the brick would look more red than brown.  I remember thinking……I’m sure, right, the brick is going to all of sudden look like a totally different color – yeah that’s going to happen.  If you can’t tell from my sassy attitude here, I was so not a believer; but I did like the colors we chose and I wanted something other than that taupey-beige on the shutters with the deep hunter green front door.    So here’s the before ……..

And here’s the after………