Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Big Reveal

Our home's exterior is finally painted! It's taken two years and countless hours of phone calls to contractors who never showed up to get it done, but it's done! Britney and I decided to tackle the repairs ourselves and thanks to the help of our good friends, they really weren't all that bad.

My job was the stucco. Britney's job was the OLD gutters :) We have what are called box gutters on our house. They're basically a wooden box lined with galvanized tin that are built into the rafter tails along the roof line. NO ONE that we called or had out to look at them had ever seen gutters like ours before. That was comforting. Anyway, Britney and Cameron did a super job on them. They're gorgeous and add so much to the character of our old girl.

So, just in case you forgot, here's a before picture. Our house was built in 1885, heavily remodeled in the 1920s and then owned by the same family for over 40 years from the late 1940s/early 1950s until the 1990s. We were very very nervous about changing the color because the house is kind of an icon in Adrian. Everyone knows it as Doc Neely's house and EVERYONE has an opinion about it. So, here you go -

Before



After MONTHS of agonizing over the right color to go along with our beautiful red scalloped roof, I of course ended up with the first color I picked out way back in April :) It's called Roycroft Bronze Green by Sherwin Williams. The trim is Navajo White by TruValue and the windows are (or will all eventually be) black.



We love it! It was funny when we were having it painted, so many people would stop and comment on how good it looked - after just the gray primer coat went on. Then once the color went on and the front was finished, we got even more compliments. In fact we still get compliments on it almost every day.



I think the porch is my favorite part of the whole house. I thought I wanted the trim around the front door to be cream and just the doors to be black, but the painter painted this part when I wasn't home and this is what he did. I LOVE it! When I got home and it was done, all I wanted to do was sit outside and enjoy the new "view." It was so much better than the school bus yellow one before.



I wanted the porch ceiling to resemble those of old Southern plantation homes, but a sky blue would have looked horrible next to the green. So, we went a little more gray and used TruValue Chicken Wire. It's perfect. And I will admit that the painter was not sure at all about my color choice for the ceiling until he got it all painted. Then he actually admitted that he liked it :) It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it's kind of a blue gray. This is my favorite view out the front door (minus all the kid equipment).



That's one big project that we can mark off our list. Of course three more smaller projects were added to the bottom after this big one was taken care of, but hey - at least we have something pretty to look at now!

6 comments:

Lisa said...

LOVE IT, LOVE IT!!! So gorgeous Lara!

southernjoy said...

Looks great, Lara!!!

Breanna said...

Awesome, LOVE it! Just painted ours too, Granted ours is no gem to start out with but the color, called brick, kind of a terra cotta makes me smile when I see it in the row with all the white painted dingy lookin' concrete houses. When we get a new camera, I'll finally be able to put up before and afters

Mullismayhem said...

It looks great. BTW, our 1890 building has box gutters, but they have been covered over with roofing. I haven't ventured to look inside them! Two years seems to be the time period to renovate old buildings.

Anonymous said...

The house is gorgeous! Love the color!

Deanna said...

Wow, I love it! What a great difference! I can't believe that yellow door...

Great job!