Another One for the Files

Penn and I did some home improvements last week. We tried to wrestle some rogue grape and raspberry vines onto trellises, Penn replaced the house's shoddy screen doors, and then since we ended up having to repaint one of the new screen doors (long story) we decided to just do all of the exterior painting we had been wanting to do since we moved in. The shutters and main doors on the house were a blue/grey shade that was okay, but the paint job was poor and the color was just sort of...dull. So after a day of deliberation that included taping six paint samples to the side of our house and looking at them at different times of day to see how they looked in different light, we finally decided on a color called "Geranium Leaf." So our shutters and doors are now green. I love the color, I think it makes our house stand out from the others in the neighborhood, most of which have black, grey, or brown shutters. Boring.

Penn's mother, though, had a different opinion. We posted pictures on Facebook and she saw them but didn't make a comment, which I figured meant she Did Not Approve. Sure enough, when she was on the phone with Penn the other day he asked her what she thought of the new paint job. Her response?

"It looks like a black people house now."

What on earth does that mean? Too bright? Too unusual? I have no idea, but it was clear from her expression that having a "black people house" is not a good thing. Way to be vague AND employ racial stereotypes! Oh, my mother-in-law.
On our walk to lunch today I challenged Penn to help me pick out "black people houses" since (GASP!) approximately 30% of the homes in our neighborhood are owned by African-Americans [in a very literal sense, there are a few first-generation Ethiopian-American families on our block]. Oddly enough, from what we could tell by our neighbors out and about this morning, most of the "black people houses" had the standard black or beige shutters. Maybe she meant to tell us that it looks like a "Mexican people house"? Haha.

Would you like a visual? Here's our side door:



The color looks brighter in this picture than it does in real life, but I happen to really like it. I just like color in general. One of the reasons I'm excited about owning a house is that I can experiment with paint colors. When I was about 13 my mom let me choose the paint color for my bedroom and I chose a bright yellow color. My favorite street in the city has townhouses painted every color of the rainbow. If the interior of this house hadn't just been painted a month before we moved in and it didn't seem like a waste to redo it so quickly, I'd have already painted each room of my home a different shade. So, yeah, to each her own!