Wednesday, August 7, 2013

{House}: Exterior Renovation - Done!

After thinking, dreaming, and planning from the moment we saw our house for the first time, we are finally making the big change I've been wanting - getting rid of the wrought iron!

I've been blogging about this plan for the distant future for some time. In 2010 I came up with a "mood board" (those were so hot then) and later that year drew an idea of what I wanted in my head.

For reference, here's what we started with - the MLS listing picture of our dear house:
The next spring we went crazy and tore out the boxwoods, which had grown unruly and I had accidentally killed a patch of when trying to prune. We added in azaleas, which were smaller and easier to manage:


All was fine until hell started breaking loose in the form of porch tiles:

Let's talk about how attractive that looked for several years. Our neighbors surely loved us.

Finally last year we initiated stage one of the porch project, a new door and window:

And finally this summer we moved forward with the rest of the porch project. First our contractor addressed the porch tiles, which were falling off the stairs because of a problem with water drainage.


Also on the agenda was taking the decorative part of the wrought iron railing out because we intended to keep the railing...

So here's the house one more time on the day the big project kicked off:


They sanded down the railing to be able to repaint it and took out all the decorative parts of the railing:


They also took the vinyl siding off the porch, revealing in tact wood siding.

They took all the tiles off the stairs in order to fix the stairs - the stairs were sinking from water drainage and need to be fixed to drain forward not backward:


All was chugging along well until we hit a road block: the plan was to wrap the existing wrought iron to create columns. It seemed like a good thing to do. In theory....


And then I came home to that. A 12 inch wide column. That looked awful. Awful. I had to squash that plan and move on to an alternate one with the contractor. We ended up taking out the wrought iron and putting in 4X4 posts to wrap around, creating a 7.5 inch column. We actually measured several in Jake's parents neighborhood to find out the proper width for our style house.

Here are the 4X4 posts going in:

And the above picture is also the moment when we decided to ditch the rails - see the left versus the right? Doesn't the right seem so open?

Moving forward, the next step was to pick paint colors - here they are:


Top left: Modern Gray, Bottom left: Popular Gray, Top Right: Amazing Gray, Bottom Right: Worldly Gray, all by Sherwin Williams

Here are the paint samples on the siding standing at the street, also with the new columns going in:

I was worried about going too dark but the darkest, Amazing Gray, was actually not dark from afar. We used Bright White (the base white for Sherwin Williams) for the trim.

At the last minute we decided to paint the ceiling of the porch light blue (Rainwashed by Sherwin Williams). Here are the paint colors once the painter finished:



I love that the Amazing Gray color coordinates with the brick mortar.

And of course we had to get a new door mat, from Target:

So with paint, new columns, and no rails, here is the finished product:


Here's the finished stairs, which are made out of Trex decking material and will fare much better than the sinking concrete stairs:

We also got a porch swing, a Polywood swing from Amazon.

And for the sake of comparison, here is the before and after from the same angle:

October 2009 -

August 2013 -


Finally! Here's to making our little ranch on a street of bungalows have a little more character and fit into the neighborhood a little more.

In columns and porch swings,
post signature

12 comments:

Kala said...

I love how the new porch looks. So much more updated compared to the old scroll railings. Great job. I have more basset hound pictures up on the blog of my Mother-in-Law's dog. He isn't much of a puppy anymore. They get big so fast. I also have some of him getting a bath but those haven't been posted yet.

Reenie said...

OMG... I love it. Great choice on the colors. It looks great! Although, I prob would have left the yellow glider. :)

Reenie said...

I think shutters would look good also, on the window (brick wall), in either the door color or the paint color you just put on. :)

Unknown said...

Reenie - I loved the yellow glider too! It wasn't practical for two people because it was rickity but I think I'm going to use it in the back. I love the idea of shutters too:) I want to replace that left set of windows with double paned windows so maybe then!

Our Volunteer Family said...

I love it! Very impressed :)

Hilary Dow Ward said...

Big hug to you two for this project. It's really impressive. Well done.

Reenie said...

As long as you're keeping the glider ;) I bought an old one from a friend and repainted it. :)

Marty@A Stroll Thru Life said...

The changes are amazing and your house looks fabulous. Love those columns. Hugs, marty

TheDabblingCrafter said...

I saw your post featured on "Better After" and I love it. We've started house hunting and every once in a while I see an exterior like your "before" and I cringe. I wasn't sure how it would ever be fixed. But this is such a great idea! And it seems totally do able and not a total budget breaker. Thanks for sharing!

Unknown said...

Looks great! We're trying to decide on how to re-do our front 4x4 in our entry way. Love yours (6x6?)! You have so much potential too with your front yard turf area. Great blank slate...

Unknown said...

And I'm assuming the broken red tile on our porch is from the old tile, great recycling!

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