Deliberating colour schemes, P1

And now we have come to the part I was most looking forward to, choosing colour schemes!

You may note I used the term 'WAS looking forward to'... that wasn't a grammatical mistake. With so many choices and being as indecisive as I am, this process has been driving me up the wall!

It all started about a week ago when I visited the Rawson office to collect my Owner's Manual, a brick of a folder containing thousands of brochures, leaflets and pamphlets of the many, MANY different options at our disposal. Ben wasn't much help at this stage, this was the point where he handed over the reins, told me "I trust your decisions and I know I will like what you choose", and stepped back leaving the entire selection process to me! Now don't get me wrong, I love that I get to choose everything, and it beats having to fight differing opinions on colour schemes, arguing with someone over whether we have round tap heads or rectangular tap heads, and what colour our door stops should be, but with his only preference being: "I want a Colorbond roof", I was at a loss for where to start...

Luckily, who should come along to save the day? My sister-in-law to be, the artistically gifted Hillory.  I had spent the majority of the week pouring over the Owner's Manual, trying to work out which tiny picture of brick (completely different from what it looked like in real life) went with which tiny picture of Colorbond roofing, and imagine it all on a large scale... needless to say, it wasn't working. So when Hill visited from Sydney on the weekend I took advantage of her artistic eye and we set out in search of the perfect external colour scheme.

We drove to some of the new suburbs in northern ACT looking at what colour combinations looked best, probably looking quite suspicious in the process as we crawled around the neighborhoods, scrutinizing each house, snapping a sneaky pic here and there and jumping out every now and then to hold a piece of Colorbond against someone's front wall to see if the combination worked. We didn't decide on a full colour scheme but came to the conclusion that bricks with differing colours through them, giving a mottled effect, less uniform, looked better than a brick with a solid colour, and that unless you have part of the house rendered (stucco type walling over the bricks) the really dark bricks looked too macho and full-on. Picturing these bricks on a cold, grey Canberra winter day was just depressing.

From there we headed out to the brick displays in Fyshwick, Austral, Boral and PGH. The brick displays are pretty cute actually, little courtyards full of half walls, each using a different brick. Its almost like a little maze. This was where the first decision was made, we found a brick that both Hill and I loved: Austral, Urban One - Latte. It's a warm caramelly coloured smooth surface brick that is slightly mottled with a browny grey. Its has a contemporary look, but won't age as styles change, and it still has a warm homey feel.

The first picture, above on the left, is from the Austral brick display, the Latte brick shown with two Colorbond colours, Paperbark and Jasper that are in consideration for the roof (not sure if I'm keen on the Paperbark anymore though, the brick gives it a yellowy tinge). The picture on the right is also of the Latte brick, from the Austral catalogue. This shows it laid with flush off-white mortar, which is how I want it laid for our place.

And so, since external house colours can be split into a 60:30:10 ratio (bricks:roof:trim/detail), at this stage I was officially 60% set on my external colour scheme! Next step, roofing and trim.