Exterior Improvements

As you can see, this house is very, very ugly. All of the vaguely hairy looking parts on the roof are evidence that a new roof will be required, and I'm hoping new shingles will improve the look. Right now the roof line brings to mind the forehead of Ron Perlman.

I dearly hope you understand what I mean because if you don't I really can't explain it. However, deep, deep down I think if we take off her glasses and brush her hair and put her in a polyester dress she might be able to win prom queen. With the right popular boyfriend. I'm the boyfriend.

So first, new shingles. I like these from Owen's Corning: they have a sort of cottage feel and will give it some contrast drama. Brown shingles are so 1970.

They're the "Berkshire Colonial" shingles. Have not had them bid out, I am hoping they just pay ME for them. That's the kind of budget we're working with.

Then we're going to paint it white! Not too white. She's definitely not a virgin: I feel some really sordid orgies have probably happened here since it was built in 1960. It's the bathroom tile that I think screams that for me - more about that on another post. Get excited. I picked Sherwin Williams Alabaster because a) my painter probably won't charge me extra for Sherwin Williams and b) It's sort of a taupy grey white. Everybody got that? Did I just blow your mind and invent a color? Guys, I don't know why I like it, I just do. If you have better suggestions, definitely leave them in the comments. I will happily ignore them at my leisure. This color is for everything. For the terrifying brown trim, for the stressful brown garage door - all of it. Get rid of the orange and brown.

Actually, speaking of garage doors:

I am hoping for a new one. This is honestly a splurge that I can't justify: the garage door it has will probably look fine with a coat of paint. But this one has cute prairie windows... I'm going to have to call my girl Iris to see if any have fallen off the back of a truck recently.

But what about the ugly iron curly weird columns? I am glad someone pointed them out. I am considering something akin to this:

They'll need to be water sealed and probably stained a tolerable color unless we make them out of an attractive wood (and attractive typically equals expensive). So I picked a Sherwin Williams exterior stain (SW 3540 Mountain Ash). I promise I don't work for Sherwin Williams? I think they might owe me back-pay after this blog post.

I also nearly forgot the porch ceiling which will get a little V groove or beadboard and some Haint-resistant blue like Sherwin Williams SW 6505 Atmospheric:

I am still quite torn on the front door. On the one hand, it's hidden inside the front porch and you don't really see it, so something like this would match the new garage door:

It's called a 9-lite marginal (as in it has 9 rectangles and the muntins look like page margins) and echoes the cute baby prairie detail I love on the garage. I'd paint it white and call it a day - a color would be kind of wasted because, duh, all you'd be looking at would be my naked butt and sideburns. There goes the neighborhood. The living room is also a dark cave (with red walls! stay tuned for more of this fiasco!) so having some windows on the front door might help. It also faces North and will never really see any sunlight, so... maybe not.

Then the rogue in me wants to do a solid door in a COLOR! Like these!

I guess I need to defer to the expertise of someone else. Then again... we could always just paint it all pink? I'm pretty tempted by this precious house. Technically I don't have an HOA...

I haven't decided on landscaping yet. Honestly I'm just going to pull off the sad bushes first and then I'll see where I'm at. Hopefully it will look like this:

Instead of this:

The end (of the front). Phew.

PS: Mom wants a car port? The best I could do was something like this that matched the columns on the front - probably stained the same color... What do you think?

The instructions on how to build a car port like this are absolutely in French. Super easy language to master while also trying to build something structurally sound that perches over my new car, right? Cool. Super glad I watch enough HGTV to feel this empowered. Curse you Joanna Gaines!