Accidentally Turning Into The Hulk House

We painted the front of the house this weekend to seal the render because it stains really easily even the rain was leaving marks on it. I know I haven't show you progress photos of the exterior yet - they're coming and here's a peek at the render on the front of the house but I just have to share with you a big colour stuff up on my part this weekend. All I can say is thank god for a patient partner Mr P and thank god for wine!

We finally found a gutter guy to install all the new gutters and down pipes, except that as the down pipes go against the walls we needed to paint first as it's impossible to get behind them once they're on. So the gutter guy half fitted them on Friday to allow us to paint over the weekend and he'll be back this week to finish it off.

First we had to sand back and paint the window frames - time was not on our side so we only managed to do the living room window done, the master bedroom window we'll have to do afterwards which is fine. To prep the walls I just used a soft broom and brushed it up and down the walls to get the sand and dirt off ready to paint.

Once prepped we headed to Bunnings to pick out the paint - we took a piece of the down pipe in Classic Cream and a piece of the render which is Limestone. I asked the paint chick to colour match the piece of limestone and she told me they have a colour called Limestone but they didn't have a sample card of the colour so all I had to go by was the picture on her computer screen. I made the bad decision of asking her to mix up a pot for me - a big 15 ltr pot of exterior paint which cost $190.

 It looked nothing like my piece of limestone rock eeeeeeek it's green!

Got back home and mixing it up thought it looked a bit green, but might be better on the walls. So started rolling it on and it was very green, not classic cream and definitely not the limestone I had asked it be matched  to. I was having flashbacks of a house Mr P and I almost bought which was green on the outside and we nicknamed it the Hulk House and decided against buying it as we didn't want to have to repaint it ... Now look at us turning our home into the Hulk House!

There is no denying from the photos it was green but to our eyes outside in the sunlight we were praying it would improve. Wasn't going to happen so we went back to Bunnings carrying the heavy paint pot and asked them to put some more colour into it - black - magenta - etc to try to hide the green. Got it home second time lucky and started to roll it on again and it was worse than the first time. The green was lighter and looking more limey with each stroke. There was no fixing this colour and as the sun was sinking we were fast running out of time to get it done.

We could've painted it on and hated it and lived with a Hulk House or we could swallow our pride and spend another $190 on a pot tinted in classic cream which is the same as the gutters and render. The safe choice. Why oh why did I try to complicate things? So that's what we did! You can't even see the difference in this paint colour it is that much of a perfect match to the render colour - I definitely worked hard to cover that green as fast as possible! We did 2 quick coats in the Classic Cream and finished the walls where the down pipes are going as it was getting dark the sun was setting. The rest of the house we'll try to get painted next weekend.

I made some amateur mistakes on this paint colour

• Always buy a tester pot - we didn't have the time to test out colours but in turn we wasted 3 trips and $190 to get the paint colour we liked
• Always check colour swatches - don't go off the computer screen - ever!
• Don't go by the name of a paint - Limestone to me is the limestone blocks at the base of our house and the new limestone wall we had built - not lime pause stone which is what the colour turned out to be

You know the worst thing about this I felt like EVERYONE knew - people driving past, or walking past, or who lived on our street I felt like they were watching and knew what a stuff up we'd done because we were outside the house and couldn't hide it!

Have you ever had any paint colour disasters?

I'd love to hear about them so I don't feel like such a git!

[All images my own]

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