You may or may not have noticed, but since we moved into this house 1 1/2 years ago I have never showed you the exterior of our home. This is for two reasons.
1. It is seriously lacking in curb appeal. The yard just "is" and the style of construction isn't much to drool over. (In my opinion).
2. It is in serious need of a paint job. Like 10 years ago. Our house is almost 20 years old and we're pretty sure that the current paint is original from construction.
So while I have spent a lot of time painting, hanging pictures, and pulling things together INside the house. The outside has been largely ignored because it was going to be such a big project.
But . . . that should all change very soon. A paint job (crossing my fingers) is in our future! We have secured a bid and are putting together a proposal to submit to our HOA. It will be awhile before it's all approved and we schedule the painter so I thought I would take a moment now to show you the "before" pictures.
Hello, house.
Let me take you up to the front door. We do have a lovely rose bush and, you'll have to take my word for it, the blooms smell ah-mazing.
As you can see the step below the door is looking a little rough. As well as the view when you look up (not pictured). Replacing the front door in all it's brass-trim glory is part of the exterior update plan.
The door handle has seen better days. You can bet we'll be swapping out the brass house lights for something a little more modern.
And in general there is a lot of stucco repair and sanding that needs to be done on the house before they can even start painting. Plenty of holes
and crumbling stucco
and wood trim that wishes it had paint.
We have spent the last few Saturdays pruning bushes away from the house, pulling out screws, and removing an old misting system that we never even used. Scott still wants to remove the satellite dishes (plural) that are attached to our house since we are no long using them (yay for Roku!) and they are unsightly. I still need to trim down the jasmine by the front door. But I'm going to wait until the last minute because it is so close to blooming and I am not going to rob myself of that wonderful smell.
So what are the plans? Well, we live in a pretty strict HOA which means I didn't have free range on color choices. But this is what I am proposing from the approved palette (these colors do look better in real life):
Crossing our fingers that they approve everything. This really is the best combo I could come up with from the colors provided and I think it will look nice. Really, anything will look better than the sad paint job we have right now!
UPDATE: I wrote this post a few weeks ago and we just heard back from our HOA Board. They approved everything except for the black on the gates & railing. Boo! They say that we have to paint those with the Thundercloud. Which is not my favorite idea. Our second option is to go before a hearing in July (the next time they meet) to try to push for our original color scheme. That is way too far away so we are going to go ahead and paint the house the way it was approved and if (when) we hate the way the gates look, we will go before the board to request either black or the Desert Suede. But first, this whole plan STILL has to be approved by the master community -- we are working hard to get it on the agenda for their meeting this Friday. Two levels of approval + boards that meet infrequently = a very impatient homeowner that just wants to make her house pretty!
When we finally get this done I will be jumping for joy!
