apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

it's funny, i saw this article yesterday and thought that while i hadn't noticed a lot of colors i have been noticing a trend towards dark colors -- black, dark bottle green, dark grey -- with white trim which i, personally, absolutely love.

Holy.... people are actually sued based on their house colour? That is amazingly ridiculous. I can't believe that the court system would allow such frivolous lawsuits. Wouldn't this just open up the possibility for a huge storm of random suits? I hate the house across the street that has random ugly chickens all over the front yard, but only because I'm not a fan of chicken sculptures. Obviously she is, so I can't imagine suing her or asking her to take them down - it's HER front yard. I just accept it as an expression of who she is, and since so few people do that these days, even if I don't like chicken sculptures, I'm glad she displays them! This is so so sad.

There is a house up here painted like a rainbow has run across the bottom of the front of it, with sky blue for the top half of the house. The owners have the word 'somewhere' laser cut out of wood and mounted on the outside of the house, directly above the rainbow. I love this house and every time I see it it fills me with such joy.... if they were ever forced to re-paint, that would be a tragedy.

It is sad that lawsuits like this are taking up valuable court time, although I have to say I'm not surprised after that one years ago where the woman sued McDonalds because her coffee was hot.

I can understand that if you bought a home in an area that has a homeowner's association you probably will have restrictions on what color(s) you can use (among many other things) - the obvious solution would be to look elsewhere. Not saying it's right or wrong to have those restrictions, just that they do exist and will probably cause grief if you're a person who can't abide by them.

Our house is blue blue blue, Frida Kahlo style blue. In fact we often call it Casa Azul for that reason. The previous owners painted it that color just before selling it to us, and part of the reason we liked the house is that it is blue. Otherwise, it would just look like another tiny ranch house from the street.

I love colorful houses. My house has pretty much the same color scheme as the one at the top. We painted it last summer. Here is the before picture. It was--still is--a fixer-upper in a neighborhood that's been gentrifying for a while and is still on its way up.

A couple of things went into choosing such a vibrant color scheme. The house is on a street that, suffice to say, could use a bit of verve. It's rather isolated in that there aren't any single-family-homes next door, so we didn't need to fit into a larger neighborhood color scheme, so to speak. Finally, Seattle is so damn grey most of the year that we can use all cheery color we can get.

Coincidentally enough, we painted our first house, also a horrendous fixer-upper cottage, pretty much exactly the yellow-and-white scheme of the second house pictured above, but with creamy green trim on the windows and door. Turned out rather Mary Engelbreit...This was a massive departure from its previous color of battleship grey. The house is on a fairly visible corner, and the color change (as well as other evidence of our rehab efforts on the house) made a huge impact on the neighborhood. We literally had people stopping their cars in the middle of the street to cheer on our efforts, including a fire engine full of firefighters on the way back from exercising in the park! I don't think it would have made quite as much of a positive impression if we'd painted it grey again, or even beige.

AngieK - love your house!

Years ago, during a particularly grey and dreary winter, I took an alternate way to work and passed a house that had been painted yellow. It was like a little sunbeam sitting there and cheered me up so much that I made that my regular way to work. The first time the sun actually made an appearance that house just glowed!