Beach House Designs

Peggy sent a Houzz article on this subject, and I really like this room:

The muted blue-gray, the potted plants, and the relentless white is what my house needs. Designer Gabriela Gargano; Jute rug, bleached whitewashed floors. "We stuck to white, taupe, black and oak...and layered in some cool blues and natural tones for warmth and contrast." Her tip: "Paint the ceiling, walls and trim one color to disguise lower ceilings."

Another project, which comes off as white, is actually "Agreeable Gray" by Sherwin-Williams.

Beach House Furnishings

I'm looking forward to a bed like this:

I have a Malm nightstand that I like. I think maybe I could paint it white, maybe with an antique finish that lets the brown show through. I could get a piece of glass for the top.

Just the way Jim Poole painted everything black, I could paint things beachcomber white.

Exterior Colors - Examples

Update 3/24: Light green is emerging as the direction. This house (12036 9th Ave.)  illustrates the vertical siding over horizontal shiplap, in green, with brick:

Example M

It also shows what white eaves, fascia and gutter looks like on a black composition shingle roof.

Is that a two-tone? Or does the shiplap reflect more of the sky? SW 6435 Gratifying Green is lighter than Example M. Maybe SW 6436 Bonsai Tint? Maybe I ask my neighbors (we met at a block party last year, but they're not on Nextdoor).

Update 3/24/19: I asked my neighbor, Mark, and he told me. He used Sherwin-Williams Duration paint. SW matched a Behr color called Still Grey. The eaves and fascia are a Behr color called Tinsmith. His house was built, along with its neighbor to the south, in 1955, but it's the same mid-band molding as mine. While the neighbor is vertical T&G like mine, Mark's is actually a striated board without v-grooves. Mark did 10 different color samples and took several days to decide on Still Grey, by the way. His flush front door color is from the same card as Still Grey, two shades darker. Mark's eaves, by the way, are exactly like mine.

Peggy had a couple of houses with something like Gratifying Green:

Example E

Example I

Peggy's examples from Sierra Madre:

Example A

Example B

Example C

Example D

Example F

Example G

Example H

Alastair's examples from Broadview:

Example J

Example K

Example L

Beach Colors

Enjoying the decor of Coast restaurant at Shutters on the Beach, 1 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA, I'd like to recreate the feeling here. (Coast and Shutters on the Beach are the work of Michael S. Smith.)

It seems to be a gloss, bright white (SW 7757 High-Reflective White) trim, with a satin near-white (SW 7005 Pure White) on larger surfaces. Woodwork and beadboard. Light and airy, which my house needs because most of the windows face away from the sun in the shade of tall trees.

I particularly like the simple wood framing on the ceiling--perhaps that would be all painted satin "near white," rather than treating the wood separately from the ceiling itself. There was a low ceiling at the restrooms at Coast "coffered" 3/4" like this, and it worked well.

Update 3/23/19: I drew up a "coffered" ceiling plan (all but the kitchen and BA1) and found that it represented 778 LF of 1x4 (8 sheets of 4x8 MDF--see below). $300 worth of materials for the ceiling.

The color experiment I tried in 2015 used Glidden Ultra-Hide 220 (~$22/gal, apparently no longer sold by Home Depot). I used three colors in that: light (Distant Ocean Grey), medium (Blue Grey Sky), and a dark blue (Approaching Storm). I think the Distant Ocean Grey still goes well with the white enamel window on the Living Room east wall. The other two have too low a LRV (light reflectance value). High-Reflective White is 256, Pure White is 255. An accent, like light blue "French Moire" is 173 or a light green "Oh Pistachio" is 150.

To avoid requiring top quality boards, a carpenter on YouTube suggests ripping a 48" x 96" sheet of 3/4" MDF into 3 1/2" strips (and taller baseboards, etc.). You could get 13 strips, or 104 LF of 1x4 that way. The sheet is $30.63 at Lowe's, so (not counting cutting costs) it's .30/LF. 1x4 Poplar is $1.92/LF.

While we're looking up prices, 4'x8' of hardboard beadboard is $20 ($.625/SF). "HGTV Home by Sherwin-Williams" high-gloss trim paint is $33/gal. Infinity satin latex is $45/gal.

I considered the exterior a bit, but it needs more study--looking around the neighborhood and thinking about style trends. Painting the house's exterior will be a much bigger project. For one thing, the fascia under the gutters all around is the dark blue used at the mid-band.

The exterior is currently three sections: Lower, horizontal clapboard; upper, vertical T&G (and the same on the wide eaves), and a horizontal band between them. The current colors are:

• Upper and Eaves: Bright white (like SW 7757 High-Reflective White)
• Mid-band and fascia: Dark blue (like SW 9179 Anchors Aweigh)
• Lower: Gray blue (like SW 9161 Dustblu)

This sets up a high contrast between upper and lower and tends to make the house seem squashed and even more horizontal, to me. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'd like to tone down the white a little, but use it for eaves, uppers, and lowers. Actually, I wonder if the bright white/near white approach discussed for the interior might make a nice distinction between walls and eaves. Sherwin-Williams exterior whites include a slightly creamy Iconic White (SW 4004) and a slightly grey Belgian White (SW 4025).

The mid-band molding could be similarly painted out, but I wonder if a pop of color, like a Seahawks green, might make an unusual ribbon around the house. It's only about an inch tall; it might not even show from the street. We could pick up that color for the front door and garage doors--you'd see them from the street certainly. Sherwin-Williams has a pretty intense avocado that they call Venomous (SW 1232).

Revealing the Roof

There's a roof under all that tree litter. It was clean a year ago, September 27, 2017.

The garage roof and half the breezeway is now clean. It took about 90 minutes on the roof. My arm is still tingling from the leaf blower.

The mess looks so dry and lightweight that all you'd have to do is run the blower over it. Not true. There is moist soil in there, gripping the shingles. When it finally peels off, it looks like roll out grass sod.

There is still some stuck to the edges--I didn't want to get that close to the edge. The detritus is covering the driveway, the deck, and--predictably--filling the gutters. I'm thinking the process is:

1. Blow off the garage roof (the worst mess)
2. Blow off the main roof (larger, but less messy)
3. Go around, methodically, and empty the gutters
4. Rake and bag the driveway
5. Rake and bag the deck

With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm thinking I may revise the first two as:

1. Do what I've already done--blow off the worst
2. Blow off the entire roof when I get home from Thanksgiving

Bottom line: 90 minutes of physical labor combined with a risk of falling does me in! I might be able to do 3 or 4 hours with the gutters, where I'm a lot less likely to hurt myself.

Some folks on YouTube demonstrate building a U-pipe for your leaf blower so that you can blow out your gutters while standing on the ground. Might be worth a try.

New neighbors

Met the new neighbor at 801 (the Swierz') just now when I got their Amazon package by mistake. Joe Dubbs was the addressee, and I met his wife, Miranda.

The new neighbors at the corner, 11803 8th Ave, might be Luke Dieker.

And, on the west, it's David (talk2dave@email.com).

Timber!

Today was the day the volunteer Cottonwood tree next to the Japanese Maple fell to the ax. A second opinion, arborist Tom George of Evergreen Tree Care, agreed with Peggy, Tanya, Kevin, and even nextdoor neighbor Kris Swierz, that the tree should be removed before it hurts the brick planter. Sigh. No Lorax to speak for this tree.

No damage yet, but it's heading that way

It was just a sapling in 2014--it's in the listing photos

And...it's dead. Now to dispose of the corpse and deal with the trunk evidence.

By the way, I also took Tom George's advice and cleaned dead wood from the Japanese Maple. He explained that the tree decides which branches it doesn't want and it withholds nutrients from them. They die and become brittle. So, just grabbing at a bunch of branches snaps off the dead ones. Trying to "wishbone" a living branch draws resistance from the tree. So I was able to gently remove about a half a yard waste bin and the tree looks much nicer. Probably still needs a professional "shaping," but I'll wait on that.