Hey there,
I need to either re-stain or paint my house this season. I built it 4 years ago in the Lake Tahoe area in CA and stained the body of the house with Olympic semi transparent stain color 920 which is a gray with a very subtle tint of redish brown and the trim is 917 which is a cedar tone. The siding is 1×8 horizontal ceadr. My wife really likes the colors and I think they are OK too but I don’t really like the Olympic product.
I have two questions. 1) If we decide to keep the color would we be succesful in spraying a clear coat of something else over it and have it look good again (rejuvinated)?
2) If we want completely change the color (painting the house) does anyone have any suggestions for viewing house colors (via internet or otherwise) to help choose a color? Because as we know, a bad color selection can ruin a house and it can be hard to know what a particular color will look like from a small sample.
Replies
Whatever you do, be sure to keep with a stain. It will never peel, and once you paint you can never go back. Look in the archives here, there are some articles on people's favorite brands, Penofin has semi-trans stains, it's regarded as the best but be prepared to pay for it. If the color of the stain is close (like a different shade of gray) you should not have a problem with a new product, particularly if it is darker than what you now have, which will probably have faded anyway. Going from a darker stain to a lighter is a different story, it will come out darker than you want, but can be done, just try a test to make sure you like the result.
I think taht Cabot and/or some of the other paint companies have online systems where you can select a house style similar to yours and then play with the colors.
You might also Lowes and HD. I think that they might have something similar.
this is a good way to check out various colors. Also Cabot will send you 4 ounces samples for a nominal charge.
http://www.cabotstain.com/shared_frames.cfm?area=colors&cabot=1