Shades of Brown, the color that is… 5/23

Our place really needed a cosmetic job. The last time I stained the exterior I used a ‘real deal’ stain, a blue light K-Mart special which was closing its doors. It only took two heavy rains to wash most of this real deal stain off the siding.

There’s been a committee of two trying to come up with a new look to the old place. So, into the hardware store and its paint department we ventured. They had hundreds of shades of the color called toup? Toup? It’s a dirty shade of brown from gray to the green side. But here’s the problem …just try and describe a color you are after to a sales person. It’s impossible. We knew what we thought we were looking for and to be safe we purchased quart after quart applying a sample to our place. From a distance it looked like a brown / tan zebra and under different light conditions the colors changed as well.

This was a team project. Rosebud was the one trying to get the color right while I was the brush man. After a dozen sample color errors we got one that was just right. So what’s the big deal about color? I mean I’ve got a friend whose is as color blind as a bat. To him green is red, blue is yellow and walking into an art museum is like getting hit by a strobe light. A rainbow? Well, to my friend it’s take your pick of grays.

So when it comes down to - beauty is in the eye of the beholder, like the new Bar Tender at the Thirsty Whale, but let’s not go there.