House Thoughts

This post has no real point except to document our gargantuan (read: expensive) dreams for this house. Nate and I love to discuss all of the options for the exterior of our home, and you can regularly find us sitting outside after kid-bedtime, going over the same ideas on repeat. I'm sure many of you can relate, especially if you have a house as old as ours, built in 1925 with constant projects in the works. Or at least, at work in our head;)

We've already done plenty of updates to the interior of our house. But now the 'big dogs' remain: windows, insulation, roof, siding, and....possible addition for a fourth bedroom and master bath. YIKES, right? But if we do these updates, we could feasibly stay here forever and we really don't want to change locations. We love everything about the inside of our house, except that we only have three beds and one full bathroom. But the exterior? Not our favorite at all.

So much brown. Wood, painted siding needs a complete scrape and re-paint job. I don't think we would replace the wood siding and cedar shakes with cement board, just to preserve the original look of the house and because the wood is in great shape (paint is not).

The roof is probably never going to leak but with a solid three layers of old shingles, it's a tear-off that needs to happen more for aesthetics than anything.

And our windows? The bottom level boasts original 90 year old windows, the upstairs have some replaced screens but are mostly original, too. We still have to switch out storms in the winter and screens in the summer, something that many people don't even understand as a possibility! Storing a boat load of heavy storm widows, then massive screens in our basement is really not fun or effective. We had an energy audit done to the house and the windows themselves are in great shape and really don't need to be fully replaced, just cleaned up on the inside and we want to get a new exterior storm/screen combo. Bear with me, folks, I know these details are boring! But look at the potential. BEFORE (current):




GLORIOUS AFTER! (a friend's husband did this photoshop version for us, love it).


We might not do a bright door and are leaning more towards restoring the original wood door, staining it dark possibly. But the color scheme of a dark gray roof, lighter gray siding with the upper cedar shakes slightly darker than the lower level, and then white trim are going to happen. I like the idea of keeping the windows darker gray with the trim white, since we love the look of our windows and want them to pop. I would even consider a fourth shade of gray for little accents around the windows and the trim.

It's all so fun to think about and dream about and talk about. Actually DOING these renovations are daunting, and we aren't crazy enough to think we can DIY it all. But Nate and my father-in-law are convinced they can scrape off the old paint on our siding, and repaint it in 'just a few weeks'. Insert major eye roll emoji here, seriously. Tony HAS scraped off all of the paint at his own house, which also has original wooden siding. He has been repainting the house for oh, four years now....but to give him credit, I know he could potentially do this mammoth project at our house. Not sure how he thinks he will have the time, though.

We'd hire someone for the roof, obviously, and would buy the exterior windows somewhere. The dudes think they can hang the new part of each window. Did I mention we have thirty-three windows in our house, and a window company once told us that an average house has thirteen windows to be replaced? Yeah, that's a fun fact. $$$$$$$. Insulation needs to go in around the house, which is a 'hire-out' job, too. Oh, and the garage. We need to repaint and re-roof the garage, too. Sigh.

The addition is a concept that just won't quit in our heads, either. We have a full, walk-up attic with a flight of stairs to the third level right now. To make it functional and not completely pitched, we'd have to re-do the back of the house at the roofline. Then we could have the attic as a master bedroom and bathroom, plus an extra room across the second level of our house where our 'airing porch' lies right now. I would think that if this addition is actually happening in the near future, we should just wait to do the roof and also the siding at that point, right?

This is when I start to space out and just stare at the 'after' picture. Isn't it pretty? Someday! We just need to decide if it's worth it to invest so much money into our beloved house, or if buying a different house makes more sense. For now we talk and dream. Extensively. Who else loves to dream about house projects with us?