More than two decades have passed since Karen and Neil Skiver took ownership of an 1,800-squarefoot Victorian in the small town of Greenville Ohio, but Karen remembers well her first impression of the house.
“I loved the stained-and leaded-glass windows. I loved the outside look of the five gables,” she recalls. But, she was less enthused about the home’s exterior color scheme, which at the time included lots of baby blue and rose paint. “I knew it had to go,” she says.
A new paint job was the first of many improvements bestowed upon the mid-1800s, four-bedroom house. The couple shifted the color palette from soft pastels to bold green and red, and locals lovingly dubbed the residence “the Christmas House.” More recently, the exterior colors evolved again to the current—and more subtle, Karen adds—tan
