Back in February of this year (2017) I received an email from Shawn. Here is what she had to say:
I found you during an internet search. It is very challenging to select house colors for my Tudor home (shown below). I was looking at painting it Dorian Gray with Gauntlet Gray or Black Fox trim and pure white around the windows, but my sister thinks I should go more gray than tan even though the stone is golden in color.
She continued:
- The house looks dull and lifeless. The former color was tan, which looked just as bad .
- The home is grand on the inside. I want to articulate that on the outside. (It was built by Evander Holyfield in the late 80s and sits behind the mansion he later built.)
- I know the stones are warm. I want a crisp, rich gray, but I don’t want the color to conflict with the warm tones in the stone. I want the house to have a classic, yet modern look.
- I saw many pictures on the internet with deep rich grays, but they had a lot of white — around the windows, roof lines, gutters, garage, etc. I am worried that too dark of a gray accented in a darker gray/black may make the house look gloomy.
Ok, let’s stop right here. Did she say the house was built by Evander Holyfield in the 80s? Say what? I asked for a little more information.
My sister found the home during the crash in 2010. I financed it and she renovated it. Holyfield built this home in Fayetteville in 1987, but had long since left it when we took possession. He built a house (er… MANSION) directly behind our house. It is on an entirely separate lot. He told my sister that (when he still lived in the first home) he looked at the field behind the house and started imagining what he would create there. I believe (the new home) was the largest home in GA at the time it was built. I’m not sure how long he lived in our home, but he was the first occupant in 1987. Holyfield came over to the house one day and talked to my sister at length about it. He told her he put lots of pink in the home because that was his wife’s (at that time) favorite color.
Because this house has such an interesting back story, I thought you might like to see a photo of the Holyfield mansion in Fayetteville.
Not bad, huh? The home was later foreclosed on and eventually purchased by a rapper. But let’s get back to the matter of our home needing new paint colors.
Shawn was indeed wise to realize the stone was the driving force for the correct palette on this home. The roof color was also a concern, but not to the degree of the stone. While there are some cool, gray tones in the stone, I didn’t believe they were strong enough to “convert” this house to a dark, gray palette. As she mentioned, most homes with a dark gray body are counterbalanced by a white trim, which would have been totally inappropriate on this home. We knew the name of the game was to go much lighter to pull away from the “heaviness” of the existing dark brown. In the end, we went with Mindful Gray – SW 7016 for the body and Urbane Bronze – SW 7048 for the trim. Once again, shown below is the “before.”
And the “after” shot:
While Mindful Gray is a gray, it is a warm gray. By using it we were able to kill two birds with one stone. Shawn was able to use a gray which is what she had in mind to begin with, but we didn’t leave the warmth of the stone behind in the process. This Tudor home received a much needed facelift without sacrificing the integrity of the architecture. Check and check.