Help, I don't like the colour of my Colorbond window frames!

What have others done when they haven't liked the colour of your aluminium window frames?

Our house is 14 years old, and we're giving it a bit of a cheap "facelift". The painters are in next week doing a new beautiful new ulux colour scheme internally. Externa update to follow soon. And I am already acutely aware of just how much this is going to make the Primrose window frames stick out. Like dogs' you-know-whats.

My Dulux colour consultant said I could either live with it, or get in there with a tiny paintbrush and update the colour (to something less yellow). She and I both agree black would look great on the outside. Not sure about the inside though.

I (JOKINGLY) asked my painter if his guys would do it. Well, you can imagine his reaction. A great big no thanks - too fiddly!!

Had a look around the neighbourhood and noticed some of my naighbours seem to have handpainted their windowframes to update the colour!! I don;t think I would have noticed they were repainted if I hadn't looked closely enough.

What would you do? Paint it, or learn to live with it?
If you have painted your aluminium frames, how did you prepare them? And what did you use to paint them?

I'm not in a hurry to do anything yet - I'll let the painters update the interior with the new colour scheme... who knows... maybe they won't look so bad. But I doubt it... it's always the little things that get under my skin! grrrr....


P.S. It could be worse. At my godfather's house the other day I noticed that his frames are forest green. Now that would be a nightmare (for me, anyway!!)

Why don't you ask your painter for technical and aesthetic advice.

Thanks dymonite69,

As far as my painter's aethetic advice - well, my painter and I feel differently about the Primrose colour, you see! I don't like yellow-based creams at all (which primrose is, especially when compared to white, one of my new trim colours). I find the yellow-based creams very out of date. My painter, however, thinks they're fine. He's encouraging me to just "work with it" and paint the rest of the exterior in similar yellow-based creams so that the windows won't look funny.

My Dulux colour consultant doesn't want me to do this at all (which is good, because neither do I!). She wants more updated grey-ish off white colours and black trims for our front exterior.

The Dulux colour consultant and the painter know each other well, and they just can't agree. I'm definitely siding with the colour consultant, though. I can picture her vision and I think it will look great. It won't work well, however, if we leave the aluminium window frames in their current colour.

Hmm... more research and brainstorming needed, I think... I can't seem to find many people online who've attempted hand-painting them!

We are about to purchase a two storey home with primrose coloured windows and I am wondering the same thing. The facade colours are all federation with the primrose and dark maroon and I would like do a facelift later on so I'm very interested in the most cost effective solution as well. Also what are you doing for interior colours to work with the windows? I would like to put in white plantation shutters and paint the architraves and skirtings an off-white with neutral colour schemes for the walls. We have done this in our current home and looks fantatsic, but the windows are white here... I am concerned how they are going to look from the front of the house with the primrose. Why was that colour so popular 10 years ago???

Hi Marley07,

In a nutshell Marley07, our interior colours simply DON'T work with Primrose at all, and nor will our exterior colours when we do them. (My colour consultant doesn't really believe in 'working with' those parts of the house that you don't like and/or might change. It's a bit of a problem, but she's otherwise very good. I think colour is so complicated, I don't blame her for not wanting to go the route of jazzing up what we've got. But there's a colour consult in the US whose blog I really like - her name is Maria Killam (http://colourmehappyblog.blogspot.com/). She manages to 'work with' whatever is in the room already and always get a great result. She seems to just have a talent for it.)

What was I saying? Oh, that's right. So yeah - our interior colours are now complete, and they don't work with Primrose, but they are gorgeous and totally modern. Just like your plan, we have white trim (skirtings, archtraves, timber framed windows....), but although some of our windows have timber frames (and were tehrefore painted white) other windows were colourbond... so they're still in Primrose (until I do something about it). I HATE the inconsistency!!


My colour consult will be back next week to give me the exterior suggestions. I already know that she wants our trims (colourbond window frames included) in black. And that will look fantastic, but a) it's a lot of work for the painters and b) it's not going to last the weather particularly well. We'll probably need to repaint it before it comes time to sell (in 4 - 5 years time).

I managed to talk my painter into including the exterior of the window frames in the job. He doesn't like the idea (too much work/won't be a perfect finish), but he's a lovely bloke, and he and his employees have agreed to do it (might need to throw in a few beers for this one). (Don't get me wrong, though, they're charging accordingly!!!!)


You wrote:

" I am concerned how they are going to look from the front of the house with the primrose. Why was that colour so popular 10 years ago???"

YES, when I pull up in the drive and I can see into our master bedroom - the beautiful new white rollers on the inside of the window, and the lovely new cool grey/green on the walls.. and then... YUCK, it's all framed by those horrible, horrible primrose aluminium frames!!

THEY HAVE TO GO!


Oh, sorry... TBC, the baby just woke up!

How close did you go to your neighbours windows to look?

Sorry, that went totally over my head! Maybe I'm just sleep deprived... you'll have to explain


ANYWAY - as I was going to say before the baby woke up:

The plan is this: The inside of the aluminium frames are going to be painted Dulux Whisper White, and the outside will be painted black (pending the colour consultant's advice). No, aluminium window frames are not going to be easy to paint, but it HAS to be done. Last time I was at the Dulux Inspiration Shop, they told me that those windows which are already weathered will take the paint quite well (i.e. they've been scratched up a bit, are a bit coarse so the paint will adhere reasonably). Those which aren't at all weathered (just my luck, most of them look brand new despite the house being 15 years old...), I'll have to sand them down or use some sort of product to prepare them.

Anyway - since I haven't had any responses from anyone whose done this before, I'll boldly go where noone else (in this thread, at least) has gone before... and post my progress!!

Good luck with the house you're buying

I look forward to you showing us the results TV and the prep etc. Good Luck. I don't think the scheme will feel "complete" until it's done and it will bug you until it's changed. Good Luck. Be brave one window at a time.

I'm at lock up stage with my dream house. I had no help and stupidly chose my window frames first before choosing the colour of the house render. I chose stone beige over paperbark because the winders and handles come in stone beige. Now that I can see the facade, this colour looks crap. It's too hot and pink comes out of this frame. I should have stuck with the paperbark and not worried about the handles. I have ignored the colour of the windows in my interior and chose natural white for the walls and browns /beiges tiles and carpet without red or pink. Hopefully flywires and shutters will disguise the windows even further. Exterior render is still a problem, the watertank, garage, gutters and downpipes are paperbark and clash with the windows. I paid one consultant $150 and she chose Gnu Tan. When I brushed on the sample it looked awful, it's way too warm.
I never wanted aluminium. Hubby said maintenance was the main reason. They are double glazed and of a high standard quality. I just spent over 35k for the windows and wish I never chose that stupid colour. I'm stuck with it and won't be allowed to paint over it.

Hey McKinnon,

While I feel your pain, I'm not sure I would have done it much differently to you.

It makes sense to choose the colour of the item that has the most limited palette first. In your case, your winders were limited, so you worked with that to choose a frame colour.

Can you repaint the render on the front of your home to a colour that works better with your window frames?

Hope I've understood.

P.S. I still haven't started painting my own aluminium frames. Too many other thigns going on. I'm the meanwhile, I'm giving them the death stare and making sure they know they're unwelcome.

The problem is I have to chose a render that fits in with paperbark and stone beige. 2 colours that are not alike. Which one do I work with?

Our windows are Stone Beige and our render is Paperbark. I had a similar problem as the supplier of the windows did not have Paperbark as a choice much to my utter distress. I also wanted the garage and the render to match so therefore had to choose a c/bond colour for the render as that is all I could choose for the garage door. It was a nightmare.
As much as the Stone Beige windows are not exactly the same tone of the Paperbark render, it has turned out not so bad and nobody except me has really noticed. Have a look at my thread and see what you think. It's not the same problem as yours but a similiar type of situation. I have also found that as you live in the house and time goes on, these things do fade away in your mind a bit and become less annoying.

I can't find the pictures of your windows and render

This one I took recently shows them:
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg89/leah6363/garden010.jpg

http://i880.photobucket.com/albums/ac7/themax_photos/driveway001.jpg

I will take one today in the sun for you.

I have left these pics in a large size so that you can see it clearer.

Hi,

I just changed the colour of two older window frames to the refit we had elsewhere in the house. As a touch of nice irony here, we chose Primrose

However that's beside the point. Primrose is a Dulux Powdercoat range standard colour, and consequently I could get it in a spraycan, $6.50 each. I thought this would give a better looking finish, and it did. But was it SO SO superior to a brush coat? Not really.

So I masked up these windows with tape and newspaper, a very tedious and fiddly job. It helped that I could take out the screen and sliding pane. There is a knack to it, especially in the corners, and I went faster with time. I did not bother spraying any hidden parts, such as down inside the track.

The main difficulty was the parts of the frames which have fuzzy draught excluder strip, and any strips of rubber. Masking these was very difficult, and I was driven to get a plastic chopping board, laying lengths of masking tape, and cutting them lengthways into thin strips for this.

One masked, the job was very quick. For painting onto powder coat, especially at the rounded edges, it is recommended you scuff it a bit with 400 grit paper. Another good trick is to prime the surface with Penetrol. Any actual bare metal should have a first coat of etch primer, which is available in a spray can.

However, for a whole house, I could definitely see myself resorting to a brush coat I think. Oooh, all that masking up, oooh.

Cheers

GeoffW1, I'm a bit short on time so I'll keep it brief:

I am SO GRATEFUL for your post - you've given me a great starting point! I didn't even know Dulux made a powdercoat range. Do they have all the same colours are standard colourbond colours? (Not that it matters much for me - I just need a white... and I'll settle for any old white at this rate!)

Tell me - could you both sand/scuff the surface AND use Penetrol to prepare the surface, or would you just choose one method or the other?

Oh - lastly - any photos of your handiwork? Would love to see it!

Got to run!!

Hi,

The Dulux Powdercoat range is a much wider colour range than Colorbond (who can't spell!!),

http://www.dulux.com.au/media/604802/ba ... gle_fa.pdf
http://www.colorbondcolours.com/home/re ... dard-range

but they share some colour names, such as Classic Cream and Deep Ocean. Whether they would be an exact match I don't know. The Powdercoat colours are widely used on architectural products. I got the spray cans from a retail outlet for C R Laurence Aust

http://www.crlaurence.com.au/crlapps/sh ... 39324:4307

and as you see they do have spray cans in the Colorbond range.

As to preparation I think Penetrol would be the way to go before overcoating, especially as the job will be exposed to sun and weather. I'll take some photos of my windows for you.

Cheers

hi
i was just wondering whether you could tell me the colour scheme you used in your home? That is, the wall colour and architrave colour in your kitchen and bathroom. It looks so nice and i've driven myself nuts with all the test paints i've slapped on the wall. We've got similar or the same beige coloured aluminium window frames and i've desperately wanted my archs and skirts to be white but didn't have the confidence to do it until i saw that it looked nice in your house. i think the warmth in the walls tones the window frames in very nicely.
Thank you heaps for posting all your building works on the net, it's helped a lot
Eliza