Today I finished priming the bay window. It’s all white and kind of boring, but it looks better than it did before and the wood will be protected during the winter months. I still have some (a lot of) caulking to do, so don’t look too carefully!

The scraping, repairing and patching took much longer than I had anticipated, and it had to be squeezed in between the extraneous bits of chaos collectively known as “life”. During the process, however, I was able to determine the original color scheme for the bay. I still don’t know the color of the surrounding siding, but will discover that in the spring when the hideous vinyl starts coming down.

I do know the original color for the metal shingles in the gable ends, however! Surprisingly, they were painted a bluish green which can only be described as seafoam. While we will probably use the seafoam again, I am open to tweaking it a bit. So, when looking at the color renderings at the end of this post, try to imagine this color in the gable above the bay window… it may sway your opinion as to which of the three options look best.

As a side note, I’ve been uncovering more information about the history of the house and it is proving to be quite colorful — and at times tragic. More on that when I’ve got more dots connected!

First we’ll look at the bay window’s evolution over the past few months:

This is how the bay window looked when we started the project. It hadn’t been painted for many years. Aluminum marred the fascia molding and window casings.



The cornice was especially weathered. Here, panel moldings have worked their way loose only to be further hampered by subsequent misguided applications of caulk.



This piece of panel molding was bowed, allowing all kinds of dirt and debris to accumulate behind it.



Carpenters made mistakes in the nineteenth century, too! These window sills had been cut too short, so filler pieces were added to extend the length of the sills. The repair probably worked just fine until deferred maintenance allowed them to become problematic. After using a wood hardener by Abatron, I used Bondo (yes, the automotive body filler) to bond the pieces together and fill the gaps.



This is what the bay looked like by 3:00 this afternoon. Boring, but relatively clean and better able to endure the elements. Hopefully I’ll have a few more warmish days in which I can get the caulking completed. Now, let’s look at some colors!



Although my selection of colored markers is small, these colors come very close to approximating the original color scheme used on the bay window. There are two shades of brown, an odd olive, and black for the window sash. Personally, I really like it, but would like very much to have your thoughts as well. Don’t be shy!

Following are two more versions of the same idea… I just lightened and darkened the olive to see what that might look like. Bear in mind that the gable directly above will (probably) be done in Seafoam — and I have no idea what the adjacent siding color was or will be.



This version shows a darker olive. It’s more somber, but I like it as well.



This version takes the olive into a yellowish realm. Hmmmm.

Well, that’s it for now! What do you think about the colors? Be honest!
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