Deception at the Paint Store

We are painting the outside of our house this week (ok, someone is painting it for us...). This is not our first "paint the house" experience. The house we lived in previous to this one we managed to paint the color a clown would wear (bright, bright blue - see below). Originally it was even brighter than this picture shows but we brought the $300 worth of too-bright-blue paint back to the paint store and they were able to tone it down. I tell you the honest truth: that blue paint looked SO GREY in the paint store. I feared it would not have the "pop" I was looking for. That was only after we painted the entire back of the house. We then proceeded to repaint over the clowny blue but as you can see, our tone-down was STILL on the circus tent side. There is nothing GREY about this house color!! But we weren't going to paint the whole back side of our house for A THIRD TIME. So we just stuck with it. And so then, when it was all done, we and our neighbors "got used to it." When we needed to give people directions to our house we would say, "right turn on Orchard, and then look for the bright blue one. YA CAN'T MISS IT."

So, here we are, painting our "new" house (it is new to us, but going on 40 years old. Our blue house is newer and prettier, hands down, regardless of the color). And we wanted a very specific look. We studied color after color. We brought the swatches outside, in the sun, in the shade. We agonized over what the trim color should be. We played with swatch after swatch until it was just right. Though we were pretty sure it was what we wanted, we went ahead and bought sample cans. Deceived at the paint store again. So, 7 different samples later (at $5 a shot), we finally settled on "that perfect color" (plus a trim color to coordinate). But still none looked anything like what they seemed in the store. We finally ended up using our 7 different samples to mix our own color. Today, the front of the house is half painted and...

wait for it...

WE LOVE IT! (WHEW!)

I have been searching the archives looking for a "before" picture so you can appreciate the new look. You will just have to imagine the yucky blucky storm windows and blah yellow-tan paint job that is no more!