Today, I looked at Google Maps and saw that it had updated the street view of our house. When I saw it, I was a little taken aback because the former street view was so… unbecoming. To date we have: updated the front landscaping, tested out a paint color on the door, added a front porch rail, and painted the front porch. That said, we’ve still got an exterior bucket list, which includes: more landscaping, painting and fixing leaning front column. But check out this exterior before and after as it looks to date:
Project 1: Landscaping
When we purchased the house, we inherited a front yard full of tropical foilage, and we’ve been chopping these plants back since day 1.
Many moons ago (March or so), I purchased a handful of paint samples and slapped them on the back of the house thinking that I’d done some major due diligence and we’d be ready to choose. And, wow! Did I have some things to learn about the difference between painting indoors and outdoors. When the sunlight hit these colors, they were blindingly bright. Ouch. and Yuck.
I also had a target color of this awesome house nearby, and the guy at the paint store graciously offered me a paint fan deck so I could color match. I did ring the bell, but when no one answered, I snuck around to the side of the house and splayed out my new fan deck. Voila! I had a couple colors that I thought matched. When I went back to the paint shop and showed the store associate the house photo and my imagined swatches, she says: oh, that is much more sage and much darker than you think. Whu?! Again, refer back to the note about the difference of colors in sunlight vs. indoor light.
So, all this to say: we haven’t selected a color yet. We’re also battling these big red brick columns in the front of the house. We don’t want to paint them, because, despite disliking the brick color, we feel we owe it to the 100-year-old-house to keep them original. #oldhouseguilt
We are also currently accepting suggestions on a color palette that would minimize these offensively colored columns. We fear that the beautiful blue-green spectrum colors we’ve been sampling will contrast with the brick and make it stand out more.
Project 3: Leaning Front Column
It feels so good to check this off the bucket list. A few weeks ago, we finally selected a contractor to rebuild our leaning front column. We got six contractors to come quote the project over the course of five months, and their quotes ran the gamut. Most seemed to be guessing at what to do about it, until we finally got to the sixth company who confidently told us that “they do this all the time.” Finally, someone who really knew what they were talking about. They tore down the original column, saved the brick, poured a concrete footer and rebuilt the column using the same brick and wooden pillars.
