The Outside of the House

I put all interior projects on hold for the summer in order to work on the exterior of the house and the yard.

Here are some of the changes we made to the exterior of the house:

• New windows installed.  We were able to convert the double window over the front door to a single picture window.
• New garage doors installed.  I was going to just paint the existing garage doors white and do one of those "carriage door makeovers" you see on Pinterest (Two houses in our neighborhood did it and I didn't realize the windows weren't real for like a month. They look awesome.)  Upon closer inspection we discovered the doors had been both driven into from the driveway and backed into from inside, so we decided to bite the bullet and replace them.  I wanted the windows for aesthetic reasons, but I love how much light they provide inside the garage during the day.
• All trim painted white.
• Front door repaired with Bondo and painted Echo Lake Aqua (a Glidden color mixed by my Benjamin Moore store).  New bronze front door hardware.  The door was super banged up (the inside still looks pretty terrible) but front door packages are pricey!  And of course it's a non-standard size so we can't buy off the shelf.

Here's the front of the house Before...   
















...and the After
















The blue sky sure cheers up the after photo!  I like that things look a little crisper now.

Next up is replacing the siding, which is damaged all over the house (somebody really liked his BB gun).  But before we can do that, we need to decide about the front porch area.  I originally wanted to add a deep front porch from the front door all the way across the three living room windows to the left.  Now that we've lived here for a year and are spending so much time in the back yard, we may do something simpler.  Either way, we'll have to hire an architect to do the drawings.  I'm having so much fun using the siding visualizer on the Menards website.  When we do replace the siding, we are getting rid of the horrible medallion.  I'd like to go with a lighter color so the white trim is bit subtler.  I'd also like to incorporate some shingle siding into the front of the house.