Thursday, March 31, 2011

North Side Painting Finished


Yes, the north side is now sporting a new coat of paint (except the foundation, which I will do at the end of the job). Compared with the monochromatic olive-drab the house wore for over fifty years, the change is dramatic. This is basically a textbook High Victorian color scheme, but the colors are tweaked a bit to mirror colors found in the huge pine trees that dominate the lot. Note how pretty and graceful the bargeboard looks, now that it is properly picked out with a nice dark contrasting color. It's like curls of hair framing the face of a pretty girl.

I have noticed that the body colors are highly changeable depending upon the light hitting them; at times, the red component comes out with an assertiveness I did not anticipate. This is undoubtedly a function of the green trim color; as the Victorians well knew, complmentary colors serve to strengthen each other. Since green and red are complimentary colors, the red in the body colors is naturally more apparent than it would be otherwise. I am hoping that the addition of the dark brown foundation color will pull the colors back into proper balance. Not that the matter is terribly crucial aesthetically; the scheme looks great in any event. I only mention it to illustrate the truth of the precept that you can't be absolutely sure of your house colors until you see them on the house. These colors are precisely what I wanted; I knew of the complimentary effect, and thought I had accounted for it. Well, we shall see. Context is everything.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please don't let the "Comment as" dropbox annoy you:
Simply choose "Anonymous," and no one will check your papers.
Feel free to leave your name in the comment if you'd like.
I will be moderating the comments to keep out the spam.