See, a couple of days ago I painted big swatches of the back of the house with the paint samples I bought at Lowe's. I liked how the Ashlar Gray turned out so much that I clapped my hands and told Louis Cat, "That's it! That's the one!" All excited, I ran around to the side of the house where Charlie was scraping paint and made him come look at the swatches.
Charlie said, "Huh. To tell you the truth, I don't like how any of 'em look with the roof."
I said, "What's wrong with the roof?"
He said, "Well, it's brown and none of those grays look good with it."
And I stamped my little foot and said, "But I want a gray house!"
And Charlie said, "And so you shall have it, my dear."
And then we spent three blissful hours together at Lowe's picking out the perfect color for the house.
Wait. Maybe that's not exactly what happened....
Maybe what actually happened is that I had a meltdown after he said that about the brown roof and told him that he knew my roof was brown and he knew I was planning to paint the house gray and he knew what paint chips I stapled onto my application with the Historic Preservation Commission and he didn't say a word until now. That caused Charlie to escape to White Trash Bob's house, where he told WTB that I was "havin' a fit" about the paint, so WTB came over and said something like, "I hate to say it, but I agree with Charlie." And then I lost my mind and declared that plenty of people have gray houses with brown roofs, a statement which was quickly disproved when Charlie drove me all over town and noted that there is not a single gray house with a brown roof anywhere. Oh. Then WTB pointed out that maybe if I used a brownish-gray and dark trim instead of white trim, it would look alright after all. So I went back to Lowe's (by myself, because Charlie said he was having no part of the paint chip picking) and picked out at least 57 more paint chips, which resulted in the purchase of four more paint samples and even more paint on the back of the house. At that point, I started taking pictures because I had told y'all that I would put the house color to a vote. Charlie asked me what the Sam Hell I thought I was doing, since most of the colors look almost identical except in bright sunlight, so y'all wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway.
The end result of all of this is that now one small section of the house is Ashlar Gray. Which is the color I intended to paint it in the first place. (The white is primer, not paint, because WTB is right about darker trim looking better with the roof than white trim.) Eventually the trim boards will be Mountain Smoke, the window frames and porch trim will be Gilded Linen, and the window sashes will be Lincoln Cottage Black. (All colors by Valspar.) I think. Unless I change my mind again.