Paint Wars Cont'd
Even in self-expressive L.A., house paint is a subject of controversy. Joe Robinson reports in the LAT. The lead:
At 76, Ann McGuirk seems an unlikely candidate to make waves, but the great-grandmother is taking a step as radical as it gets in suburbia. She's having the outside of her Santa Monica home painted a color bolder than beige. A lot bolder. A crew of painters is putting the finishing touches on a cobalt blue deep enough to dive into.
"It's very blue," says a jogger, shuffling by on the tree-lined street of rehabbed Craftsmans and Tudors.
July is peak home-painting season, and you can drive through neighborhoods from Malibu to Palm Springs and find the few, the brave, the festive -- people such as the McGuirks who are unafraid to let the block know that life is better in living color. There's the day-glo orange home lighting up a corner of Venice, the sapphire-soaked adobe with a luminous tangerine wall in Mar Vista, the home in Santa Monica that's lime green with blue trim.
Mark Shaw calls these beacons of vivaciousness "Easter eggs," and he's never too excited to see one. When he spots an egg house shining on brightly, "it's like, there goes the neighborhood," says Shaw, a real estate agent for ReMax who used to live near a home painted pink and purple. "It's equivalent to a house that's been run down. If it's in an urban area, it's a little better, but if it's in a suburb, it really sticks out."
Via Apartment Therapy.