EXTERIOR OF THE HOUSE: Trying out some paint colours + doing up planters at the same time - why not?

Our house was painted a very red kind of red by the previous owners (see below)...

We both like the idea of repainting it something far more subtle and natural and think that it would actually make the place look a lot more Dutch cottagey and less glaring 70s red. I will spend the next 10 years asking over and over again "why?!" with the previous owners decisions, but at least as things, are quite extreme in a lot of ways, when we do change it and make it our own you really do notice a massive difference and it is the most rewarding work which I have ever done as every little bit really does make a difference.


So how to get started... Well you might have gathered by now that when it comes to paint Wickes is where I tend to go first, they are owned by Travis Perkins, which besides being the same name as my Adam, is one of the best builders merchant brands in the country so I feel you can trust that their products are quality ones. I was also impressed that they had paint samples for exterior paint as most places only have paint samples for emulsion, which I never understand as surely you need samples of every type of paint in order to make the right decision, but there we go! Anyway, back to where I was, so I picked up the two colours which I liked the most when I was in there the other day in sample form:

Sandstone

Cool Grey

 

I wanted to do sample patches outside to see which one would go best, but rather than just painting patches on the wall, which would look very odd on an outside wall, whilst we we deciding I thought, why not do up some old planters instead...

These are some planters which the previous owners had left us, along with an old wheelbarrow, which also has some serious up-cycle potential:

So I went from this...

To

To....

From...

To...

From....

To...

And finally from this....

To...

This will eventually be used as a planter, not a wheel barrow in case you're wondering

To be honest I can't see that much difference between the colours now they are on, though the wheel barrow and the smaller chimney planter were done in sandstone and the other two planters were done in cool grey. I think I would be happy with either as a paint colour, though I do feel slightly more drawn to the cool grey. I'll do another posting when we start actually painting the walls, though there is a lot of cleaning prep work to do first I am hopeful to get started this week as we both have the whole week off work- whoop whoop!