Mid-Century Mindyourbusiness

Now, I didn't know Avriel Shull personally and I'm going to go ahead and venture a guess that most of my readers didn't either due to basic laws of physics involving time or space constraints.  But I do know that she wasn't a saint, that my house isn't a shrine, and that she built the damn thing so that people could live in it.  

That said, I LOVE this house. L-O-V-E this house.  I love this house. My husband loves this house. When my children grow up, I think they will love this house.  We bought this house for these reasons: 

1. It was this house.  



our house was painted these colors circa 1990

2. Charlie let us.

Tonight i came across the first mean comment I've found about our house.  It was on the internet, and since I also have the internet, I found it.  Anonymous said something to the effect of "That new paint job is really ugly! The old colors were better because they were old! Yuk!" (Anonymous spelled yuck incorrectly, not me.  I just wanted to give you the full effect so you could really get to know what sort of person Anonymous is.)  Youch!  You really hurt my feelings, Anonymous!  

My mother always taught me that the real reason we don't say anything if we can't say anything nice is because the person will likely find out and we'll probably say something stupid to boot leaving us really feeling dumb.  To simplify for you Anon, you said something not nice and you were misinformed when you said it which leaves you looking mean & stupid.  All in one shot.

our snazzy door

Here's the deal: The colors Anon apparently loved so much (but never actually saw in person) were not the original colors.  The original house colors were along the lines of beige, peachy beige and burnt orange.  We liked the burnt orange so we brought it back. (Note our snazzy door, Anon.)  Choosing exterior paint colors is hard. The light changes the colors about every hour.  Not to mention seasonally.  We did the best we could with our first shot.  We think it looks pretty good. 

choosing from over 20 paint swatches

We made some tough choices too - like reducing the paint colors from 3 to 2.  Risky, I know, but we thought it helped showcase the beautiful architectural detailing in the windows & roof line.  Maybe in the future we'll tweak it a bit, but painting a house is expensive and time consuming, so for now, it's sticking.  

The primary reason we painted our house was because the last paint job was all but peeled away.  As mentioned above, we love our house, so we cared for it by sanding, scraping, and washing down 50 years of cracking paint so that the siding might make it 50 more.

Here's the other deal:  Lately we've been reading a LOT of unkind words written on the internet about people's homes.  We think this is not nice at all.  We want to be sure that our readers know now that we believe houses are for living in and that most people do the very best they can with the resources they have.  Owning an Avriel Shull house is a big responsibility, maybe even more so than a "regular" home.  And we, like most people are doing the very best we can with the resources we have - including our stylistic sensibilities.  This home is like a child to us.  We pour every extra ounce of energy we have into making it beautiful, safe, and healthy.  

So please, next time you feel like making a mean comment about our house, don't.  And if you do, you won't be invited over to enjoy this fabulous house we live in.  Because we, not you, own it.  Which means we can do whatever we want here.  Which is, I guess, the moral of this posting.