First Painting Project

When we bought this house in June, we knew there was going to be some painting involved.  We just didn't know that our first painting project would be on the outside of the house.  The HOA kind of forced the situation with an email about our faded garage door and a 30-day deadline.  The garage door has been faded since we moved in, so why they waited until October when it is cold and wet to tell us we had to paint it, I don't know.

Anyway.  We knew we had an HOA when we moved in.

However, we didn't know how much drama this would cause.  First of all, NO ONE KNOWS what color the garage door is.  The HOA sent me a document from the builder that has 14 color palettes and it was our job to figure out which one matched our house.  Sounds simple, no? Not so much.  Jason and I disagreed about which one matched our house (I said 12, he thought 8).  And then the HOA told us that we had to pick from either the 6th or 7th color in our palette and if we wanted to switch we would have to submit a request.  

Ok. Fine.

Except the palette doesn't match the house that way.  And how the colors are distributed on the houses in our neighborhood varies from street to street.  And someone on the community FB page told me that they have changed the color palettes since the houses were built.  And our house is the only one on our street in this color and the only one of its size and the only one with shutters.

For. The. Love. People.

I bought what I thought was closest and brought it home.  Jason pointed out that it isn't actually the same color as the garage and went back to the store to buy one in his color palette.  He painted a little bit of the garage with each and neither one of them matched it.

Seriously.

Now time and good weather is running out (Hello! October in the PNW!).  The paint store guy told me that once the temp drops to 50 and below, the paint will stay in whatever condition (ie wet) it is in until it warms up again.

I think Jason may end up with an ulcer.  I figured we should just paint it and tell them that we did exactly what they told us...their bad if it didn't work out.  My paint matched the door and shutters, so we busted out the paint brushes and went to work.  Hopefully they are more concerned about the door just not being faded and are happy that it matches the house.  I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Before

During (we enlisted the help of Josh's BFF)

After