Blue! Too Blue ...
Surprise! The tiny house is now blue. Very, very blue.
The decision was part intentional, part on-the-fly reaction to some unexpected construction conditions. The brick masons had been having trouble matching the color of the existing grout and bricks, which was leading to a very patchwork and messy appearance. So we started thinking about ways to deal with this problem, and while talking with the owner on the sidewalk last week a bold idea came up … “can we just paint the whole thing and make all those imperfections disappear?”
We realized this could serve two purposes at once - blending the new and old brick so that we wouldn’t have to worry about making a perfect match, and also helping this tiny house stand out despite its easy-to-miss size. “Hey! Look at me!” it shouts, suddenly liberated from the matching three-flat just 3 feet away. As you’re walking down the street there’s no mistaking that this is something new, independent, and exciting.
We played around with some different color combinations using our digital SketchUp model of the building - black and gray were both too trendy, too moody. White just felt awkward, and actually made the tiny house disappear into the white stucco wall of our neighboring building. Dark blue (with a touch of gray) felt just right - bold enough to grab some attention, but still subdued and classy at the same time. At least that was the plan … but we kinda missed. Using a new, unfamiliar color without seeing any physical samples first is a mistake, and before we knew it the GC was painting the entire building with Sherwin-Williams “SW 9150 Endless Sea.” It looked good on a paint swatch, and seemed like the right idea … until we saw it going up on the wall and went into a panic. Suddenly it looked like we were building the world’s smallest IKEA store. INTENSE is the best way to describe it, and definitely in all-caps.
Luckily that’s nothing a second coat of paint can’t fix. We ran to the nearest store, picked up some samples, and landed on a new plan to tone this place down a little. We’ll be adding a second coat using “SW 7615 Sea Serpent” in the next couple days, which hopefully will bring this back into that mellow and classic range we were looking for. Fingers crossed!
