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Exterior Paint Picks and a Painting Fashion Show

A couple of weeks ago I buzzed down the interstate about 30 minutes south to go to a Benjamin Moore store.  Like a REAL Benjamin Moore store not just an Aubuchon Hardware with a paint counter.  I had never been to a stand-alone store before which got this paint nerd all kinds of geeked up about the painting potential at our new house.  I could have spent all day there sniffing the paint cans and ogling the displays, but alas, I was there on a mission…a mission to come home with #allthepaintcolors.  By all the paint colors I mean one of those fancy paint decks with thousands of color options.  When you live in the country, you forget that you can’t just buzz out to the local hardware store five minutes away to grab a handful of paint chips every time the painting urge strikes.  I came home and fanned through the paint colors in lieu of my usual nighttime novel reading until inspiration struck.

You see, our big project of the summer, the project that we really NEED to tackle is painting our exterior.  It’s in dire need of a fresh coat (or two) of paint.  After percolating over all the options, I’m happy to have put together a little exterior paint plan color combo.

Benjamin Moore Exterior Paint Color Pics

It took me a while to decide.  Something about having ALL the paint colors as options really made deciding difficult.  I could paint the house gray, green, red, white, or any other beautiful historical color.  So many options!  But then I looked at my Country Home Pinterest Board and it became very obvious what shade the house needed to be.  Go ahead and take a peak.  I’ll wait.  And perhaps hum some Jason Aldean songs in my head while pausing for dramatic effect.

Scary huh?  How just about every home is white and even scarier how many houses on that board are the same or similar style to the house we bought.  I knew we had to paint the house white especially when I have been subconsciously pinning white colonial country homes for the past five-ish years.  Crazy.  So here’s our house pre-paint.

The Campbell Compound Circa 1781

And because I needed to see it and subsequently had commitment issues, I had to mock up the house with the various paint color picks.  I used one of the tools on the Benjamin Moore site to play with color and finally settled on White Dove by Benjamin Moore for the main exterior color of the house.

House Exterior Paint Mockup White

I love White Dove.  It’s one of those oh-so-perfect, not bright, super soft whites with just a bit of gray undertones going on.  The beauty of white for an exterior and why I love it so much is that you can go with just about any color for an exterior door and you can plant some gorgeous, colorful flower gardens along the house and they’ll pop.  Speaking of exterior doors, I am craving a green exterior door like Goose craves jerky.

House_Exterior Paint Mockup White With Green Door

The green is Home on the Range also by Benjamin Moore.  For those of you who have been around since house #1, we were blue people.  Gray walls with blue undertones, blue bedroom, blue staircase balusters, blue, blue, blue, blue.  While I love blue and still want to stay in a cooler color palette for house #2, I’m ready for a change.  Since green is one of Colby’s favorite colors and we’re ready to try something new, get ready to see a lot more green this time around.  As much as I love the green, there’s also a lot of green going on outside with the shrubbery and the fields.  I also tested out a gray color, Charcoal Gray by Benjamin Moore as another door color option.

House Exterior Paint Mockup White With Charcoal Door

This color…swooning.  I’m also thinking of incorporating the gray color in the window trim, like eyeliner for the windows.  But there’s a good chance this summer that all I’ll get to is painting the house white.  Eyeliner for another day.

We do have three exterior doors and a bulkhead at this house and I like the idea of painting all the doors the same color (although the bulkhead is likely getting grey paint regardless).  So I took the patio door for a test drive in both the green paint:

Patio Exterior Paint Mockup White With Green Door

And the gray paint:

Patio Exterior Paint Mockup White With Charcoal Door

Although that storm door is coming off and the wooden door behind it is the one scoring the fresh coat of paint.  In the mockups, the charcoal is trumping green for me.  Although I’m having a hard time letting go of the idea of a green front door.  I know real life will look different than the mockups so spoiler alert, I went green.  It’s just paint and I can always repaint it gray later.

Green Door Painting In Progress

So the first few gallons have been paint have been purchased and we’re already sporting our slaving-away-painting-the-house-in-the-hot-sun farmers’ tans.  Three cans down and likely 20-30 more to go.  Wish us luck…we’re gonna need it!  If all we do is get half the house painted this summer, I’ll consider that a successful summer.  Scraping is fun said no one ever.

Comments

  1. I’m really excited about this! The house, Vermont, your projects…pretty much everything! My husband and I are planning to move to Maine in the next two or three years and it’s pretty much all I can think about. We’ll either buy land and build or renovate an old farm house. I can’t wait to see your progress in real time! I wish you tons of good juju while working on this house!

    1. Thank you, you’re so sweet! That’s so exciting about Maine. That state has my heart and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. Exciting stuff!!

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Angie's Roost Campbell Family in front of home in 2021

Hi there! We're the Campbells. We traded in Maine city living for the country life in Vermont. You'll find us here fixing up a circa 1781 historic home, growing our own food, and filling this home with the memories and things that matter. Read more about us...

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