I apologize (again) for my long absence (again) and promise (again) to try to be around more. Our 4th of July weekend was a busy one. My mom was here for the weekend, which was beyond wonderful. We managed to get the entire front garden planted ~ finally ~ as well as some pots for the back yard. And....the really {big} project ~ we painted the front porch.
The reason you're looking at only the floor of the porch in the pics is because I wanted to make a quick-ish point about color. (And I should add, I'm not thrilled with the way the paint color looks in the after...it's actually an almost-exact match to the color of the mortar.)
The hubband & I have lived in our home for 10 years, and in that time we came to take the color of our house for granted. It's grey brick. That's one of the things we don't {love} about our house ~ we both agree that the red brick homes in our neighborhood are so much nicer looking ~ but brick is brick and we can't see painting it, so we've agreed to live with it. However....as we learned when the hubband came home with a pre-mixed gallon of grey porch paint, there are a whole lot of shades of grey.
What it comes down to, really, is that our house is more of a brown-ish grey than a pure grey...and neither of us really realized it. Then one day, as I was walking through our neighborhood with one of the dogs, I started really {looking} at the other grey brick houses. What were they doing differently that I found really appealing? A few jumped out at me right away because they went straight to black trim. WOW. Definitely not subtle and {way} too drastic for me. There are a few with plain white trim and red front doors. Hmmm. And then I noticed a house with a second story addition ~ and the siding on the addition was matched to the brick ~ and the siding? Well, it wasn't grey! It was more of a taupey-ish color. DUH!
Needless to say, my tip for the day is for you to do the same thing I did. If you're not thrilled with the exterior of your home, do a little homework. Stroll through your neighborhood ~ or even take a Sunday drive ~ and take note of what other people have done. Staying in your own neighborhood means that the styles of homes will be more similar to your own, and in our case, the brick most likely came from the same truckload. ;) You might just notice some things about your own home that you've never noticed before!
Excellent suggestion. Sometimes we are too close to our own stuff to see it with clear eyes unless we are reminded to do so. Making the effort to do so with both our own stuff and the things around us is a good thing!
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