The completed project

Painting by Bob Campbell of Paint! Alameda

(Click these pictures to see the full size image.)

Katie's grandfather is reported to have said that you can paint a house any color you want as long as you paint the trim green. We chose a primary green trim that was color matched to the color of the gutters installed by Ridout Roofing.

There is a secondary brown trim that is not immediately obvious but can be seen if you examine the window frame in the porch close-up image on this page.

We strove to stay with traditional colors in this effort. Keeping that in mind, we chose red as the porch color, which brought a nice contrast to the other colors without standing out excessively.

Bob Campbell spent a remarkable amount of time paying attention to detail. He quoted me a reasonable fixed price and then worked at his pace until the project was done to our mutual satisfaction. Bob is that rare kind of craftsman who brings a lot of love to his work and it shows!

The house is 80 years old and was a rental for at least the past 20 years or so. From the looks of things, there were no more than 3 or 4 coats of paint on the house, so that averages out to something like one paint job every 20 years! Needless to say, the paint was flaking and peeling pretty badly in places.

Bob did a lot of stucco repair and retexturing. In particular the chimney needed a fair amount of stucco repair.

The new porch lamp is from The Old California Lantern Company , whom I found to be rather reasonably priced. They're certainly a better value than Arroyo Craftsman.

The new house numbers came from Restoration Hardware in Berkeley.

The mailbox is new as well and is a handcrafted copper piece from Joseph Mross .












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