From Boring Brown Beach House to Colorful Cottage

Last Updated on June 13, 2021 by Marybeth

WIFE:  “Honey, what color do you think we should paint the beach house?”

HUSBAND:   “Hell I don’t know… How about brown.”

How else did this happen?  Hmmm, beach house… beach house…  BROWN is what I think of, don’t you?

Not to knock the previous owners or anything. They’re really cool – a lot like us, just taller. She’s blond and likes wearing mini skirts, he’s gray and did some boring financial job, too. I should just ask them. But it’s more fun to imagine that conversation.

Our “beach house” isn’t on the beach, and it’s not even your quintessential cottage. It’s an early 1960’s ranch house, but you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear no matter what they say.

We were so thrilled to find our tiny slice of paradise at a great price, I didn’t say one word about the brown. I just immediately painted the burgundy/old-bruise colored shutters a bright golden yellow. And lived with the brown until we were ready to tackle the project ourselves. The beauty of living in a tiny home is that it takes one afternoon to paint the back of the house and the sides, and another for the front. Zip zip, done.

When I show you our finished DIY projects, it kind of feels like bragging. Stuart on Mad T.V., “Look what I can do!”  Also like this older, Ukranian friend of ours who my kids were scared of: she had hooded eyes and a frowning upper lip kind of like a camel, but her cooking was otherworldly. She’d bring steaming, mouth watering dishes to the table and always say in her man-deep voice, “Not to brrrag…” trilling the “r” just so.

So, not to brrrag…  Because I’m not. We mess things up, we drop tools and swear like sailors. We crash into each other and we fall off ladders into giant prickly bougainvillea bushes. We (I) hack at the ground and slice through irrigation pipes. We (Robert) paints in his newest shirts thinking he won’t get paint on them. We are truly The Two Stooges.

My trailer park chair, before

I’m in love with old metal porch chairs. I used to manage a clothing boutique where I used one of our chairs as “The Man Chair,” and a customer once remarked, “Look at that chair. My trailer-trash grandma had those.”  I am not making this up.

All the colors this chair has lived through, including pink – you can see it on the top most bar

Pink again! I just mixed some white paint into the coral

Even the bird house has to match

I quickly painted the house numbers pink before Robert realized

The front door was a little challenging because I first painted it with water based paint and it peeled

The fence used to be this green, which is kind of cool the way it matches the grass…

But I think the gray looks better, don’t you?

It’s always nice when your hibiscus also matches

We’ve started a trend in our neighborhood! Well, if “trend” means that one other family was inspired by our DIY shutters and made their own…  I bet it really will catch on though. But for now our two houses are the cutest, most colorful on the block. This is our view when we look out our front window every morning:

I can handle that.

Let us know in the comments below your DIY successes and blunders! We especially love sharing the blunders.