Color me a headache

I hate trying to decide colors!! While I'm happy with what I chose for the siding for the house and shop and what we ended up with for trim and shakes, there are still small decisions to be made that when the painter lady asks me, I just freeze up! I instantly doubt myself.

Our siding is a two tone wood/mostly dark brown, from a distance. Up close you can see the lighter tone. Originally the trim work was going to be dark brown, but the siding ended up being quite a bit darker than I realized it would be and when the builder was going to paint the trim the dark brown he thought it looked too dark (when they put a little bit on some trim) and I totally agreed. We decided on the tan trim, which I am very happy with. Originally the shakes were going to not be pre-painted (as the siding is) and I honestly don't know what color we were going to decide. Then the builder suggested going with the prepainted shakes because they won't have to be painted for a very long time and it's way up there to have to repaint, so less work down the road. So, I only had a handful of choices to pick from (which was nice, ha!) and I picked a complimentary color. The soffits are tongue and groove and they used a darker stain on that (they didn't ask me, but it looks good). The house is having the same, but.....

The front (and back) porch is timber frame beams. I think I blogged about this a couple/few weeks ago where DH had told her we were having the beams stained the same dark stain as the soffit wood. NO! I wanted the front porch to stand out and be a warmer stained color. I didn't want it to just blend in with the rest of the house. And the painter lady said that if she used the same dark stain as the soffits, it was going to look even darker than the soffits, because it's raw beams, so they would just soak up the stain and make it even darker. That was not the look I was envisioning.  Underneath the porch roof is tongue and groove boards that are also stained same color, though, as painter lady said, they are finished/sanded wood, so it will look a bit lighter, and it does. Here is the front portico with the stain applied on the top beams in front. It will also look different, once the rest of the front of the house gets sided, I'm sure.

The framer guy doesn't like it, haha. The painter lady just says "it's whatever you like" (which means she probably doesn't like it either LOL). DH was leaning toward their opinions and would just say same as painter lady (if you like it, that's all that matters). Then over the weekend he said he took some of that dark stain left over from soffits and painted a scrap of beam. He said ya, it would have been way too dark brown.

So, now I have to soon decide what color to stain our front door. I'm thinking it should be same or similar to the front porch "warm" stain. I could tell she was thinking dark brown....she says "oh, not dark brown?", but then later she said you want your front door to stand out. Well, if it's dark brown it's not going to stand out next to the brown siding, I don't think. Plus, inside the flooring is going to be a warmer wood laminate, so I want the door similar inside to that.

Then she wanted to know what I want done on the back patio doors. Eek. I have been expecting that question and trying all last weekend to decide. Picture the below sided with the brown siding, and the bottom of the house will be stone

There is some door casing trim that needs to be painted or stained. And then what color to paint the white part of the doors. Ugh. So, we've decided to just continue the tan paint color that's already on the trim around the door into the door casing. It's too cold to paint the doors right now, anyway, so I have time to think more on it. I'm leaning toward the dark brown, that our garage doors are, since there's not much actual door to be painted, since it's mostly windows. Then she was talking about the door color inside and she made it sound like it would have to be same color as outside. Well, I definitely don't want dark brown inside. But I must have misunderstood her. She said usually the inside doors are painted same color as the walls, so whew, cuz that's kind of what I was thinking, too.

Sometimes I wish I could just have a decorator say "ok, here's the colors you need to use" LOL. and I just need to trust my own instincts, I guess.