Painting Project

Ever since we bought our house, we have been wanting to update it with a fresh coat of paint.  After much deliberation, we settled on painting the exterior gray, with black shutters and a red door.  Specifically, the paint colors we selected were Winter Gates by Benjamin Moore for the house color, Front Door Red for the door and Black Tie for the shutters, both by Allen & Roth.  We were a little nervous about tackling this project on our own, but we knew that by DIYing the paint job, we would save hundreds.  Thanks to our sweet family members, we were able to get the majority of the painting done last weekend.  On Saturday, my parents and James' brother, Jon, and his wife Jenny came to help.  We were able to finish the entire gray exterior and got a few coats of paint on the door.  Sunday afternoon, James' parents came over for a few hours to help us work on trim.  Here are a few before and after pictures, we are thrilled with the way it turned out:

  Before-- kind of, we had already taken the shutters off and primed the door, which used to be black

Front- After

Front- After

Back- After, or.. during, if you look closely you can see James on the roof 

and my mom working on the siding

It's fun coming home to a "new" house every day.  It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do! We still have some touch-ups to do and we need to finish the trim on the back of the house.  We are also still debating on whether to paint the red exposed brick the same gray color as the rest of the house, or to leave it be.  At this point, we have left the brick exposed, since it is easier to paint it than un-paint it.  We figure we will live with it for a bit and see how we like it.  Here's a close up of the exposed brick area:

What do y'all think? Paint the red brick or leave it exposed?