Our Exterior Design Plans

If you’ve been following along with our house progress, we’ve talked on and off about painting the exterior of our home for quite a while. It was second on a list of larger projects, and so after some foundation work that we had done last fall, we were ready to turn our attention to the exterior. We’ve known since we first bought the house that it would need some fresh paint. The yellow is not my favorite, but more importantly than that, it hasn’t been even touched in over fifteen years, and I’m not sure when this coat was put on to begin with.

• 

A year ago, I was thinking and dreaming up ideas for the colors, and wrote about it here. Now that we’ve had some time to think it through (I’d say a year to mull it over is a good amount of time!), we’ve decided to go with….. black on black monochrome!

The work is scheduled to begin in just a few weeks! I’ll share the exact colors we’ve landed on when it’s finished, which I’m hoping will be early spring when everything is turning green. It’s all dependent on weather though, so fingers crossed everything works out.

I know it’s a very bold color choice and certainly very trendy at the moment. This is the type of project that I think it’s okay to be trendy with. Hear me out. The act of painting a wood siding house in itself is not contentious, like painting antique brick or painting quality hardwood floors. Exterior siding needs to be painted, and it has a pretty short shelf life because of its exposure to the elements. It’s not something that you can do once and leave for fifty years. During the course of this project we will be repairing a lot of rotted trim, replacing decorative trim pieces that have been removed, and tidying up some remnants of old renovations that don’t quite make sense (For example: why is there drywall on the ceiling of a porch? Drywall doesn’t belong outside!). So while the color itself is trendy now, the work and care that are going to go into the outside of the house will leave it in better condition than it is currently in. And, in ten to fifteen years if we decide we don’t like it anymore, that’s okay, because it’ll be time for fresh paint anyway.

Over the course of the last couple of years, I have had people ask if we’re planning on doing the work ourselves. While that’s maybe a compliment to our abilities, we’re hiring this out completely. We technically could do the work ourselves, but we aren’t really interested. Ethan has a full time job, plus a job at the church, so he works six days a week. I am home with little snippets of free time during naps and after bedtime, so while it might technically be possible for us to do it, it honestly would take the better part of a year to complete it (not to mention constantly renting a lift…our house is very tall!), and I just am not interested in doing it.

I hope to share more about it soon once things are rolling. I can’t wait to show you all the end result! That’s all for today, Have a fabulous day!