It Wasn't Easy Being Green

When we bought our house back in 2013 one of the biggest reasons we picked it was because of how darn pretty it is.

Of course I'm kidding. Have you seen our house? Brown siding with that terrible, poorly installed green trim? No. We picked it primarily because of the potential we saw. One of the projects we knew we'd want to hit eventually would be to add some curb appeal. Well last year it was landscaping, this year it's the house itself (and probably more landscaping).

The expensive way would have been to reside the whole house, change all the trim, change the gutters, and probably replace the roof since it wouldn't match anymore. But ain't nobody got time for that. We opted for a less elaborate approach and just reworked some key things. So, replace all the green with white, add new white soffits, replace the decorative pieces around the front door, paint the front door, add some carriage lights next to the garage doors, and, while we're at it, replace the back door. (There are a few more phases coming up too, but I won't give those away just yet.) So much less work and so easy, right? Well, actually... not too bad. We hired it out since it's still a lot of work and is a bit outside my wheelhouse. They started about a week ago and are finally finished, so here are the results!

Work in progress - one day into the work (also, hello Leo!)

The end result! And hello again, Leo!

New soffits and window trim

As you can see, even from just the "in progress" picture, this has had a big impact on the way our house looks. The white really contrasts the brown well and adds dimension to our giant vinyl box. The green was also so ugly that really any change would have been an upgrade. I'm not crazy about the front door color, and even Leslie thinks we might try a bit darker later, but it's a nice change and we'll see how we feel about it over time (because either way, I'm not repainting it right now). We had them install j-blocks around the garage door for the carriage lights, but we still need to install lights / wire them. We also have a bit of work left around the back door, so that's not pictured either. I'll be sure to show those both off once they're done. But, in the meantime, we're pretty happy with what we've done.

So there you have it - phase one of our house's exterior transformation done! We really do have some cool stuff planned for later this spring/summer, so stay tuned. Plus we've been up to more than just housework recently, so we've got a few posts in the pipeline. Hopefully I'll be publishing once a week for a little while... but hey, life might get in the way. So no promises. Thanks for reading and we'll see you soon!