Exterior color question
My husband wants to paint the house in its original color scheme. A little digging with a paint scraper has revealed a medium bluish-gray body and posts, off-white beams, Dune gray ceiling, but I'm not sure about the horizontal trim. When I dig around on the trim, I find an off-white and a bright coral, both of which seem to be the lowest color in places. Surely coral is not right, is it? The door has traces of its missing rosette so presumably it's original and appears to have been stained walnut with an additional coat of black stain on the outer side.
You might want to look at Sherwin Williams' retro palette. They have a lot of great ideas. My paint color (Stratford Blue) is also on that palette, and that is the color I'm trying to lose. Good luck!
I'm not sure where you located the original body color--I tried going through the paint layers in various places but was having trouble with the body color. By chance, I removed an attached downspout which no one had removed in all the subsequent paint jobs. It showed me the original color had been a deep charcoal/black stain.
I would suggest you might try removing one of the vertical downspouts attached to the siding to confirm your body color guess. Interestingly, the rest of the colors in my homes original color pallette were: off-white beams, black posts, light grey ceiling, and coral front door/cross bar--sounds similar to yours.
Good luck.
Jake
I know this is an old topic, but wanted to offer another suggestion how to ID the 'original' paint color for new homeowners.
If you're previous owner(s) did things as half-baked as ours did, you might be able to see the original paint color by removing exterior lights.
I recently replaced the lights in the atrium and the carport and apparently they hadn't bothered to remove the lights when they painted. So upon removing the lights, I saw the original (guessing) house color.
Another spot to check for original paint would probably be behind any exterior light switches or behind the doorbell cover plate.
