Curb appeal

The Old Blah Facade

Summer 2009 - When we purchased our little old house, it didn't have a whole lot of curb appeal.  The facade was a rather drab mix of dirty ivory colored siding, dingy white trim, and old windows.  Altogether it was in relatively good shape, mostly due to the vinyl siding and the fact that the porch had recently been re-decked. We really loved the lines of the house and we knew that with a little elbow grease, we could make the old girl stand out again.

Deep Purple

Although the original antique storm door was intact, it was, for some unknown reason painted a very dark purple.  The glass in the storm door had apparently broken many years before and had been hastily replaced with plexiglass that had long since discolored and warped.  As the first project, we took down the storm door and Monica and I spent many hours stripping off layer after layer of old paint to get down to the wood.  I then replaced the glass and patched up some of the larger holes and other battle scars in the door.  Monica then painted it a bright red with black accent trim.  Monica also painted the window casings black to make our newly installed windows stand out and add some more contrast to the facade.  The old cast iron hand rails also got a fresh coat of glossy black paint.

The electricians had run speaker wire out to the front porch, so I put up a pair of speakers for outdoor music.  I installed a new antique-copper Arts and Crafts doorbell from Van Dyke's Restorers to replace the old broken button.  We replaced the old mailbox (which leaked and left us with sopping wet mail) with a craftsman style (and water proof) model to compliment the similarly styled pendant light that the electricians had installed previously.  Monica also picked up some cool mission style house numbers from Restoration Hardware. 

The facelift of the house was rounded out by a set of white porch rockers and an antique milk can, painted red to match the door, that came from a farm owned by one of my ancestors from Amish Country in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  We've been so pleased to have many neighbors and passers-by stop and comment on how they liked what we've done to the house.  Even when you're exhausted and covered in saw dust from some project, that's always a great thing to hear.