Our Home Addition: The Outside

So we had our entire exterior painted just recently, and it's honestly my favorite part of the renovation process. Hello, grays, whites and yellow!!



And yes, the doors are bright yellow. And this color scheme is so very 'us' and makes us really happy.


Our new back patio is something Nate dreamt about for years.


We often sat right here, looking up at our house, imagining what it would look like with an addition and repainted. We don't have to imagine anymore, as this is real life now!


How about some before and afters?

Front of the house:


Paint colors: cedar shakes (the lighter gray) are Sherwin Williams 'Steely Gray'. Plank siding (darker gray) is SW 'Wall Street'. Black windows are SW 'Caviar'. White trim is SW 'Rhinestone'. And yellow door is SW 'Cheerful'.


Have I ever told you how much I hated the brown roof, brown siding, and dirty cream colors?



Driveway side: I love how the windows and doors just pop now. Also I love the little side ceiling of the overhang above our door. So glad the painter scraped it all off to show off the original bead board. Just wish we could have done that to the other soffits that have bead board, but it took a million years to scrape off a million layers of paint on that wood. And it would have cost us about $1000 more, so no. Just this little part of wood will do;)

 White trim on point, if you ask me. Also really glad we went with black windows and the black 'crown' trim piece, too.



Back of the house: looks COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.


Craziest comparison for me:


Neighbors' side:


Garage: We had to get new garage doors right before the addition, since ours totally broke. I picked light gray and just hoped it was the right shade to match the someday-addition. Turns out they worked great as inspiration for the lighter gray color.


Details: So many fun details on our house that never showed before, since they were all painted the same color.



There's that black trim piece that I love.


And although I figured this out after they'd already painted several windows, I asked to have the bottom strip of the windows done in black like the left window. Again, glad we went that route.


Bead board soffit that COULD be stripped down and left as raw wood, but for now we went with white. Maybe someday!


So the painting process wasn't too awful. We interviewed three guys and went with Rick , who was reliable and did great work. He estimated it would take him 10 days and it really took 20 days. He came every day at 7 am and even on Saturdays, sometimes with one other guy and sometimes with just himself. Rarely he had three other guys helping him.

We knew our existing paint was lead based just because of the age of the house and because Rick tested it. Rick was a certified lead removal specialist and that was important to us. He could only scrape the paint on one side at a time and had to wear huge suits and masks and tarp off everything around that side. Not all of the old paint came off like we had hoped. But you can't pressure wash lead based paint, so hand scraping was a lot more labor intensive and some of the old stuff was just GLUED on there practically. Rick tried to use a big sander but ultimately the hand scraping was best. He used some special primer/adhesion agent for any of the bumps and uneven parts of the paint.

They did mostly stick to doing one side at a time but it was a HUGE project, as expected. Rick never seemed too rattled by how long it was taking though;)

We also originally thought about getting new windows in the house, but then we decided to have Rick paint our existing windows black. We also wanted him to paint just the screens (our windows are so old, they have a separate storm and separate screen that are exchanged twice a year). Then we planned to get new windows just on the second level.

But once we saw how nice they looked painted black, I figured that we should save ourselves several thousands of dollars and just paint everything instead! That meant I pulled up an extra 10 storms for Rick to paint from the first floor. And we also had him paint the storm/screen combos on the second floor that we planned to toss and buy new. REALLY good decision, we are so happy to push off another major house project for a few more years (windows, $$$$$$$$).

And now for our patio: we had a big concrete slab poured as a part of the addition process, and then we wanted an arc extension off of that slab. We asked our mason to come back and do it for us but he was booked solid until September. So Tony and I went and picked out stone pavers and then he and Nate and I did the dang thing.



We also got SOD to help our backyard feel less like a dirt pile. It's really coming along! We have actual green grass again, hallelujah.


I never really get into flowers that much but this year I'm totally digging them. Also into adding stones to edge multiple flower beds around our house. Better late than never, right?

All in all, we are happy we did the addition when we did. Our contractor has since gone to work for a bigger company so if we had waited a year until things 'settled down', we would have missed the chance to work with Scott.

We went from 3 beds/1.5 baths to 5 beds/2.5 baths with this addition. Wallace got his own brand-new nursery, we got a master bedroom that can fit a king sized bed, plus we have his/her walk-in closets and a large (for us!) master bathroom with two sinks and a glass door shower. We have a door into the master suite to separate our new bedroom and bathroom from the four kids' rooms. But all 5 bedrooms are on the second floor together, and the two full bathrooms share a wall for plumbing.

Our general timeline:
We signed the contract with the architect in January, he completely finished in May, the contractor broke ground in June, we moved into the new addition in December, and we officially closed on the new mortgage in February. Then we got the house painted in May and that part just finished last weekend. So all together, the construction piece really took a whole year of people in and out of our house, constant messes everywhere, nails in our yard, trucks in our driveway, dumpsters in our driveway, porta-John in our yard, our yard being completely destroyed into a mud pit, and other really awesome things that come with construction.

But bottom line? It was 100% worth it. We were told to expect the process to take twice as long and cost twice as much as our estimate. In reality, it took about 6 months of actual construction when Scott predicted 4 months. Unlike the typical warning about home construction, we actually did not go over budget. There were a few items that we opted to add into the process and pay outside of our loan to make happen. I can actually count three things that we upgraded, to put us slightly over the contracted price: 1. extra insulation in the new walls, 2. solid wood doors for the rooms, and 3. windows that are black on the exterior but white on the interior. Not too bad!

And this concludes my epic posts about our addition. Next up, Wallace turns one on Sunday. Hold me.