Home Projects #3 & 4: Painting and Landscaping

Home improvement project #3 was to paint the house. As with all the projects, I spent a lot of time talking with contractors and hashing out bids. Even with some of the hiccups on the garage we ended up going with the same company - although it was a different crew. They replaced a lot of rotten wood, put in new larger soffit vents, and boarded up our gable vents (which is evidently what you're supposed to do if you have ridge vents on your roof).

We spent a lot of time picking out paint colors. We picked some colors and were ready to go with them and then panicked the day the painters showed up. Helen went out and picked up several more colors and with the help of Cheryl, the painting company owner, we applied several different color scheme samples on the house and stood back and evaluated them. We wanted the paint scheme to be more "craftsman-like" to show off our new stone steps and walkways. In the end we went back to the original colors, but were concerned that the base color would not be dark enough. The base color ended up looking much nicer once it was applied and accented with the trim colors. We were very happy with the job and thought that the colors really worked well with our new steps\walkways and transformed the look of our house to the "craftsman" feel we were going for.

Home improvement project #4 was landscaping. When I was originally talking to Mike, the owner, of the company that did the steps, walkways, and landscaping, he sensed that I was all over the place and recommended a landscape designer. The designer, Chris, axed the idea of a front porch we were leaning towards and said that we would get more bang for the buck with a nice entryway and landscaping. He put together a plan for us that we were very happy with. We waited to install the landscaping until after the painters were done so that they wouldn't trample everything. The landscaping really pulled it all together. We've been getting lots of compliments from neighbors who, like us, think it was an incredible transformation.

There's still a few things remaining: a real wood column (the beam there now is just a support), landscape lighting, and sealing the walkways to give them a deeper richer look. We're in the home stretch now.