Some exciting progress is made
Gilberto has been hard at work on the painting. We knew it would make a huge difference, but wow. W.O.W. The place has really opened up.
So far we’ve done just the outside and ceilings of the main house. It has taken an incredible amount of paint to cover up the ghastly colors chosen by the previous owners. Four coats (at least) to cover the pea green ceiling, four coats (we think) to cover the brick red shingles. Each time we think, oh just one more coat and we should be good to go. We thought that after three. We might be proven wrong again after four.
But even with a partially covered ceiling the room is looking great. We decided to go with a very bright white for the ceilings, and with the domed detail it should look really nice. The ceilings are white, and as you go down the wall the colors transition into darker, deeper hues with a nice shale grey above the wainscoting and a little deeper hued cappuccino below. Painting the ceiling white is something my mother taught me, and—along with sending thank you notes—I’ve always stuck with it. For good reason. The dark paint the previous owners had used made the room look like a cave. Even when the light did penetrate the room, it was quickly sucked up and swallowed by that paint.
The same problem was outside as well. The previous owners had chosen brick red for the shingles on the top half of the wall, a mustard yellow for the stucco wall along the bottom half. Because the top part was so dark, and because the eves from the roofline dipped so low, the whole area beneath and inside looked dark and dreary. We decided to use a similar color story as inside on the outside walls. A nice classy gray along the shingles and a very sophisticated creamy tan along the bottom.
From the front, with the Rancho for comparison
You can really see the difference between the two color schemes in this picture of Gilberto:
Gilberto paints the side of the house with fresh new colors
The side of the house, and the new garden
Before we can paint further inside we need to repair the walls and get the refrigerator moved. That means it’s time for Mulo to step in. He will also be working on the cana brava eaves, another improvement which we think will really lighten the place up.
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