Dottie - When I moved here from MD last year I brought 50 coleus with me, took cuttings from all and most made it thought the winter. You only want to plant a small tip of the stem (maybe one, no more than two leaf sets) They will get too big if you start with long stems. Also tried the whole plant and they are hard to get to look good outside the following year. You can start them in water but as someone said before they will rot and you DO HAVE TO CHANGE THE WATER OFTEN. I also found a clear glass is better and if you have some already rooting and add more, they seem to root easier and quicker. Why? I don't know. The roots will get tangled so you have to carefully pull them apart. I have found after much trial and error that the quickest and best method is to pick the stems you want and dip it into the RootTone or any hormone starter(found at HD or L's). Then plant the stem into a small pot of potting soil. Press the soil firmly down and around the stem. Then water WELL so the roots will start. I used 4-6" pots. You want small pots for several reasons. 1. take up less room on shelf or in a tray, and 2. the small plants want to be "cozy" in their enviroment to get a good start. I put mine on cookie sheets (with sides) to make watering easier and watered maybe once every ten days or so. Cut way back on the normal watering. I beleive you are going to have trouble in the location you are talking about but the plastic will help. Coleus want temps of the 60 degree range. The do not like the cold at all. I lost some when we went away for a weekend and turned one room temp down (forgetting they were in there) Lost all of them. The other rooms were OK. If I were you I'd give it a try but remember the cold is not their friend. Also another tid-bit of advise, take more cuttings than you want. Especially it there is one you really want to keep because you will lose some regardless of how you do it. You can start them in water now, (just to get them in the house for now) and later cut the stems and do the hormone thing and plant them using just the tips. They are actualy very easy but a little messy. They shed leaves and drip, etc. I save some every year but last year was more than I'd ever do again. Did have wonderful coleus all this summer but will not go as crazy as I did last year, this year. Email me as to how it goes and let me know if you have any questions. NOW IS THE TIME TO TAKE CUTTINGS AS STATED above by others. Also if you start now and see there is one not doing as well as you want it to or you decide you want more, you will still have time to get more cuttings before it gets too cold. Maybe we call swap coleus in the spring. GOOD LUCK Hope this helps.

I keep going back to this photo of the Samuel Pellet House in Massachusetts, I really, really like it. I like how the trim around the windows is not painted in an accent color..I love the depth of the red color, and the charcoal colored (wood shingle?) roof. As well as the subtle pop of color on the front door. This house speaks to me!!!! And, it wouldn't show road grime! I'm not sure how I would deal with my porch posts and railings (that still need to be reinstalled)...perhaps paint them in a very dark gray/almost black color? And what about the gutters? The same dark gray/almost black color, or the house color? I really do prefer to stay away from white on the house itself. We also have outbuildings, which I would most likely paint the same color as the house, but I'm thinking that on the outbuildings I would use white on the trim areas, to tie them into the white pasture style fencing we will be putting up in the spring.

In my homes in ND and MN, we had problems with freezing pipes even further in than that. I would never put one in an exterior wall. You will need to use heat tape on the entire pipe to prevent freezing in very cold temps. In one of the aforementioned homes, the water lines running from the basement utility area directly up to the bathroom would freeze because of the deadair space in BETWEEN the basement ceiling and the 1st floor bathroom. Apparently, some nimrod thought that if you stuffed all sorts of insulation round the pipes from the basement side, they would be OK. Well that actually insulated them FROM the heat of the house -- so every time it got to 15 below or more, they would freeze. In the other house, the kitchen water pipes ran from the utility room, through a bathroom ceiling, then down the wall into the kitchen. They were never less than 2 feet from an exterior wall, but because the ceiling of the bathroom was very well insulated, the outer wall of the house between the floors was cold and combined with the cold outside air migrating down the exhaust vents, a cold air pocket would form around the pipes in the ceiling. We measured the temps on the interior bath ceiling and got 65 degrees. The temp probe registered 25 degrees in the dead space above the bathroom - kinda like it's own private attic! This problem was not discovered in the home until we tried to use it year-round. Previous years we blew out the water pipes by November.

Based on the feed back…I was looking at the different ideas,taking off the shutters, or making them wider ,painting them off white/cream or dark brown or black,painting the garage door off white/cream , painting the house door and/or the railing and posts brown.Also adding more red flowers. I am leaning towards painting the shutters black or dark brown, i did strongly consider making the garage off white as well, to match the trim but i will need to look around my neighbourhood to see if any of the houses are painted that way ….otherwise i will hear from the HOA . I will also add some red plants or flowers around the porch. Thank you for the ideas , and also for helping me realize that it’s not an entirely horrible color (like the lime green house posted above, by ’Jinx’ …😁) - I just need to get used to it.