showing our backside

After weeks of silence on the home building front, Dad2Amara and I are finally getting into what I truly enjoy about house construction: the selection process.

I believe one of the most important decisions a home buyer will make during the custom building process surrounds the exterior of the home.

Guests will drive up to your home and will begin to formulate an opinion on your home based on its curb appeal.

If money were no object, cedar shake siding would be the way I'd go. (Need advice on how to select cedar siding? Check out this great article from This Old House, one of Dad2Amara's favorite magazines.)

But because our checkbook does not have unlimited funds, we chose vinyl siding that has the look, and texture, of cedar shake siding.

Our building prefers Alside siding.

That was the easy part.

All of a sudden, I entered some new homeowner paradigm -- our consultant advised me that 85 percent of her homeowners chose siding colors in the tan family. Too bad I had already formulated a color for the house Dad2Amara designed. And it was damn close to what other homeowners were choosing.

I hate looking like every house on the block. That's why we have the Yellow House. No one else on our current street has a house our color.

But I don't want to stand out too much. No one wants to be that house in the neighborhood.

So what was I to do? I didn't think of this predicament. So I wasn't able to Google it ahead of time.

If I had, I would have found helpful tips like this one or this one.

So I scoured the color selections Alside offers. And I purposely stayed away from anything beige or tan or brown. Not much was left.

In the end, Dad2Amara and I chose platinum gray. I think that goes back to my expensive style.

But now I think I may like the Cape Cod gray because of my love of the Shore.

You can see both colors on Alside's Color Palette.

If you were coming to Amara's new house would you want our front and backside to be in a subtle platinum gray? Or how about the darker Cape Cod gray?