Guilty. Last ambush paint job was a nice green and white combo performed on the kitchen while Mrs Bunny was in Oregon.

Needless to say, Ruby Herring was a bit surprised when she came home from work. "What was I supposed to say? It was already done."

I know a lot of guys who would be sleeping in the car if they did that.

However, I applaud his efforts.

Around here, it's snooty. Earth tone colors, communities full of similar -- yet different -- houses, major limits on neon and if you don't do your lawn regularly, you'd better have a service that does. (I hate mowing lawns. It drives my neighbor nuts. So, when he cuts his, he nicely mows the front of mine and I do the back when the dog has trouble finding her way to the door.)

We had a businessman build an entire industrial plaza and deliberately designed it to look quazi-old Spanish. You know, with 'bricks' showing through gaps in the 'adobe'? The city leaders got hysterical and managed to delay his opening up the place for renters by pulling his permits, slapping zone violations on him, code violations and generally having a hissy fit. He took them to court. In the end, he sort of gave in. He repainted the buildings to hide the different colors, but you can still obviously see the 'cracked adobe'.

Down the road from me, probably 3 miles, is an old house, which the new owners painted pumpkin orange. BURNT pumpkin orange. Friends of mine, who live in the high end neighborhoods around here, were outraged. Not that they could see the place unless they drove for 5 or 10 minutes, but they were trying to find ways to force the owners to repaint it.

I thought it was -- and is -- cool.

The people didn't finish the house for a long time, leading me to wonder if they ran out of money or had injunctions filed. If they ran out of money, I was considering going and buying them 5 gallons of the paint. However, they did finish the place and there it sits, a brilliant burnt pumpkin orange surrounded by boring, Earth Tone homes.

BTW, didn't FARK have a story some time back about some guy who got in a dispute with his neighbors over the color of his house and wound up painting it polka dot?