Front Porch. Epilogue.

Incase you missed it, here is what we started with on the front porch— circus-orange roof, chopped-into siding, bright purple doors.

Here’s the front porch today.

I already covered the floor-stain-debacle in exhaustive detail…  you can see how orangey it is. Time and weather will darken the wood, and hopefully, by next spring it will be less… colorful.

Unless it wants to sand itself in the night…  In which case, I would appreciate the opportunity to choose a different stain.

These are the porch details I was in charge of:

1. Shutter color
2. Front door color
3. Floor stain for IPE decking

And somehow, despite all the agonizing over shades and tints… Despite all my nine million paint samples… despite testing stains and special-ordering products… I still ended up with a floor color I don’t like.

And a shutter color I don’t like.

I’ll survive.  Thanks for your concern.

But mathematically?  1 out of 3?  That is a score of 33%.

Kind of like studying really hard for your French exam… for months ahead of time.  And conjugating verbs.  And reading Sartre.  And wanting to reach through time to smack some sense into Simone.  And going to France and eating baguettes and saying, Mon Dieu.  And OH PIERRE.  And wearing some very chic shoes.  And traveling out to your country house and making endive salad and wearing only grey.  And sounding enchanting even while screaming at your contractor that the cobblestones you ordered for your courtyard were supposed to be marble, not granite. Imbecile!

And then, despite all your hard work… getting an F on the exam anyway.  Because the day of, you show up with your pencil, your professor decides not to test you on French.  Or your ability to order cobblestones.  But instead, on microeconomics.

The problem with the shutters?  Is that they look black—  A look I find synonymous with actual black.

It’s fine.  I mean, except for how I did not want black shutters…  And aggravating, because if I was going to choose black shutters, I could have appeared decisive and easygoing… saying airily—oh, just paint them black… I don’t care.  La la la.

In my defense, I liked this color on its own.  It’s the one on the right, up in the picture.  It looked rich and contrast-y and charcoal-y.  And it wasn’t until Paul painted all the shutters and hauled them up to the roof that I realized my error.

It was getting dark, and the color didn’t look rich or special anymore, it just looked black.  Paul got busy hanging them, and I didn’t have the nerve to tell him I didn’t like it.

Plus, I didn’t need him getting out his laundry list and adding to it–
Item #597: the time Victoria made us repaint the shutters.

Also, I was too tired to care anymore.

He came down from the roof and stood next to me in the driveway.  He was like, do you like them?  And I was like, yes.  They look great.  I love them.

If you’re thinking that Paul will read this and be sad when it is revealed to him that I don’t actually like the shutters—let me clarify.  Paul will not care if I like them.   Only that I am willing to live with them.  And he does not have to be further involved.

Paul and I stood there for a moment.  Him, appreciating that FINALLY something was getting finished.  Me, wishing I had taken more time, found more colors, gotten more samples.

And then Paul said—what kind of paint did you get?  And I was like, I don’t know.  What do you mean?  I got the exterior stuff you told me to.

And he was like, no.  I mean what kind of paint did you get?
DID YOU GET GLOSSY PAINT?

And I was like, oh?  That?  Yes.  I totally did.

If you missed how Paul is the glossy-paint patrol, and you feel your life would be enriched by knowing the genesis of the joke, you can read that here.

index of all front porch renovation posts