Exterior Transformation Final Reveal

Finally after a week of posts detailing our summer projects…here is the exterior final reveal! 

Before 

(Sorry I couldn't find a good shot before painting the garage doors)

After

There you have it! Our summer exterior transformation! Granted we still have plenty of things to do and here's our to-do list:

• Replace the gutters and fascia
• Paint the trim
•  Paint/replace the vinyl siding
• Paint/replace the shutters 
• Paint main window
• Install house numbers
• Remove eyebrow over the garage
• Paint the garage doors
•  Replace the front door
• Install an outdoor light to the left of the front door
• Make a pergola for over the garage
•  Fix the retaining wall next to the driveway
• Update the landscaping
• Fix the concrete walkway and front steps
• Install window boxes

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Exterior Transformation Part 4

The final part of our summer exterior transformation was adding black vinyl shutters to the windows….

Yes, those dirty mustard colored shutters had to go...

We installed vinyl shutters from Lowes...

We were concerned that we wouldn't be able to fit a shutter on the right side of this window but we wound up super lucky, it just fit!

This window looks so much bigger now that it's been framed by these shutters! 

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Exterior Transformation Part 3

Oh how much I love retaining walls! NOT! They can be very pretty and functional but over time if they aren't built properly they can shift and start to fall apart. That was our issue and as you can see it was on borrowed time. We finally decided that enough was enough we had to rebuild it. Ultimately we would like to do something more permanent later but for now we will suffice for a rebuild. 

This was the wall before we rebuilt it….

…and after…much better!

-We took all the stones down and placed them on a tarp
-We dug the dirt back and then started rebuilding the wall one stone at a time…(this took forever)!!

All in all, the wall is holding up and we think it looks great!

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Exterior Transformation Part 2

After painting the garage doors our next logical step was to paint the huge front window the same color. This window needed a little more work because there was old caulk, chipped wood and it was quite dirty. 

We first clean all the windows and frames...

 Then sanded the wood frame and caulked all the gaps…

Then we painted all the frames the same Valspar (Dark Kettle Black) that we painted the garage doors.

Before the window was not making the right statement and now this black really frames and highlights the windows! It's perfect!

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Exterior Transformation Part 1

Over the summer we were hard at work on the exterior of the house. I am constantly finding myself with a never-ending to-do list that is always getting added to. We focused last year on the inside of the house and just got around to the outside. We had this vision for what we wanted it to look like and Jared used "Paintbrush" and added some black to the trim and the garage doors as well as a different color for the siding. While the siding will be something we do in the future the trim and garage door colors were something we were able to change much easier. 

We started with the garage doors. They are original to the house and are wood. The paint just wasn't doing much for the house and we wanted to add a little drama. Black was the answer for us!

We chose the Valspar's Dark Kettle Black..

After three coats this was our result! We love it!

That is just the beginning of the dramatic change! Wait until you see the rest of what we did this summer :) 

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Project Stain Fence COMPLETE!

Okay so we have literally been itching to get this fence taken care of since we moved in just over a year ago. It was old and weathered looking which can be nice but not in this case it just looked like it had seen many better years. We debated for a long time about what exactly to do with it…paint or stain? We were worried that because the wood had remained unprotected for so long that it would take the stain unevenly so we were initially leaning towards paint. So we went through a list of colors that we could potentially paint it. We have a yellowish-beige house, white trim and a brown roof. So what color do you choose? We were thinking white but white gets sooo dirty and there's no way we were going to spend all this time and money painting the fence to have it look like a mud pit when it rains. Sooo we then considered black….hmm….how often have you seen a black picket fence? I've seen plenty of wrought iron ones but not wood. We currently have no black on our house so it didn't make a lot of sense. We love black but a black fence would make too much of a statement…not sure a good one. So we went back to our original idea, let's stain it! We had already bought some stain last year in our attempt to stain the deck….we tried it and were pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be beautiful. At some point we realized we needed to just make a decision and stick with it. So here's our beautiful "new" fence…

So here were our steps:

1) Clean the fence (we used this pressure washer)

2) Let the fence dry thoroughly (we gave it a few days)

3) Find a couple sunny (not-so-windy) days to stain

We used this Semi-transparent Cabot stain in Cordovan Brown and for the most part it worked pretty well. Some areas of the wood as you may or may not be able to tell took to the stain differently but we weren't expecting perfection. 

So here's a cost breakdown:
- Pressure Washer (already owned)
- Paint Sprayer (already owned)
- Cabot Stain (11 gallons) ~$400 ** please note we do have a pretty large fence and this includes two coats on both sides. We probably could have saved more with a cheaper stain as well as hand brushing which was not an option as far as I was concerned!
 Total: $400

If you want to attempt staining or painting your fence with a paint sprayer I would consider checking out this video that we found helpful. Also be aware you will get some overspray so prepare for that but it took us about 1.5 hours to do each side one coat. We let it dry overnight and did another coat on each side the next day. So it took us about 3 hours total. Not too bad considering how long hand painting would have been (ouch)!

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How to Edge a Garden Bed

For several months I have been envying those beautiful sharp bedding lines. I've seen this done many ways whether it be with a machine, shovel or hand edger. We decided to go the edger route. We recently tore out the old holly bushes that's why there's so many bare spots. (see that here) 

We used:

-Half moon edger (here)

-Wheelbarrow

-Shovel

-Rake

-Gloves

…all the old edging was already coming up..

so we tore it all up….

we tackled this area first on the left side of the house...

 Jared picked a spot a few inches from the old edge of the bed and pressed the edger into the ground…

so Jared had a little too much fun with this part! 

 after stepping on the edger pull back towards you to loosen the soil… 

he kept moving along the trench as he stepped on the edger creating a consistent line...

 every once in a while we stopped to clean out the trenches...

We then discarded all the excess sod...

it'll look something like this until you level out your soil

We based our lines off the existing ones but came out a few inches….just know you can always take off more you can't take off less so start conservatively...

here Jared is evening out the slope (we don't want a steep drop-off). We also used a metal rake to even the soil out...

There you have it! Beautiful crisp lines! Next step mulch...

 Note: You can use a garden hose or string to help create lines if you have trouble eying it. Pin It Now!