| July 29, 2001 Red House Gallery
(originally in weblog)
Marty and I are trying to figure out what we want to do
with the outside of our
house. It clearly needs to be painted (we'll keep it red, of course), and we'd like to
get a new front door (not another brown one) and possibly add some trim in a contrasting
color. We probably won't get to this until next year at the earliest, with all the other projects going on.
So we have some time to figure out what we want.
With that in mind, yesterday we went out on a Red House
Safari, looking for red houses of a similar style and/or age to ours, to see what
people are doing to them. Many of the red houses around these parts have white trim, but
that's a look I'm not very fond of. Too barn-like, somehow. But there are other options.
 Yesterday we found two that we liked to varying degrees. Red
House Number 1 (left) has a very dark green front door, with narrow windows on both sides
of the door. This is my favorite configuration for the door. I would very much like to get
some of those windows next to our door to lighten up the front hall. When we first drove
by this house, we thought the door was black. We have seen a few red and black houses, and
they do look very sharp, but I'm just not sure if black is right for our door. (This is
when Marty always sings, "I see a red door and I want to paint it black...")
House No. 1 is a very similar style to ours, classic
colonial, although I have no idea when it was built. Our house (built in 1765)
has larger windows than this one, which I'm very glad about. But I like how this house
isn't hiding behind all those huge bushes like ours is. (And I'm certain that neither
those bushes nor the larger windows are original to our house.)
 Red House Number 2 (right) has a lot going on. Its trim is a
kind of forest green ("too Christmassy" says Marty). I do like the piece above
the front door (somewhat obscured by the flag above those white benches). I don't know
what you call that thing, but I like it. The shutters are nice but our house doesn't
really have room for them between the front windows. Check out those tiny little windows
on the second floor!
So we are still looking around for inspiration. If you have
any red houses you'd like to share, please send 'em here.
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