Brandon and I are starting to think about what we want to do to the house once the weather warms up. Of course, the arrival of spring will also mean the arrival of our baby, so maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves!
Our house was originally built in 1910 as a little bungalow with two bedrooms and one bath. At some point (probably around 1970), the attic was expanded with dormers to add three bedrooms and another bath. The stairs leading up cut into one of the original bedrooms (now Brandon’s office), making our home a 1400 sq. ft., 4 bed, 2 bath house. Great! Except that they didn’t bother to blend the addition.
This is what the house looked like when we bought it (and pretty much what it still looks like):
Even if we do nothing else, we at least need to paint the trim. It’s something that we knew needed to be done when we bought the house, and two years later it’s just looking worse and worse. Of course, I want to do much more than that…
- paint & repair the trim
- paint the front porch and the back deck
- replace the railings for the front porch with a style more appropriate for the house
- cover the sides of the front stairs (lattice?)
- build a gate to hide the storage area under our back deck (lattice?)
- replace our ugly white screen doors with simple, unobtrusive ones
- install gutters with covers that supposedly don’t need to be cleaned
- remove the aluminum siding on the addition and stucco it to match the rest of the house
- change the house color
- paint the garage to match
- put up cute new house numbers
- maybe change the mailbox?
- Add an outlet out front and in back (there are none outside)
- add another metal sculpture in front of the house (we already have one)
- put in some foundation plants/shrubs
- plant a small tree (pagoda dogwood?) out front
I would love to change the color of the house. The stucco has been visibly repaired in a few places, and there are probably a few more spots that need some attention. It would be nice to blend those repairs and freshen things up a bit. Plus our house is an exact match with the house on the right, so it would be nice to have ours stand out a little. I like these three color combinations from Behr, though right now I’m leaning toward the first:
I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to do this year, but it’s certainly fun to think about. Last summer, I worked on a mockup of the front (and several readers contributed!). I think I’ll have to continue playing around with ideas… at least I get to see what the house could look like. You know, given an endless budget and time. ;)
