A New Exterior House Color!!

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Each year for the past 3 years, I've scraped and painted one side of the house, slowly making my way around the entire thing.  It usually only takes a weekend to scrape and paint one side so it doesn't turn into a big commitment.  But each year that I go and buy another gallon of the same light yellow/cream paint, I dream about changing the house color.  Reality soon sets in though that completely changing the color of the house would be too much work and too much expense.

That is until the beginning of this summer when a friend of ours needed some help painting her house.  She went from a light colored house to a rich, dark color - and I fell in love.  It was only a matter of days until I had convinced Brent to let me do a little experimenting.  

I was having a problem with our roof color and figuring out what color of paint would look best with it.  The roof is called Burnt Sienna, which is sort of brown and sort of reddish.  But when I looked closer at the shingles, I could see some dark spots, almost a navy or charcoal.  So I started messing around on Benjamin Moore's website to plug in different paint colors.  Benjamin Moore Hale Navy was the absolute winner.  Anything with too much gray or brown just didn't look right with the shingles.

I was still a bit nervous about taking the plunge so we bought a test pot and painted a swatch on the back of the house to look at it for a few weeks.  Even with a such a big test spot, I still couldn't pull the trigger so my neighbor friend suggested that I paint the entire front of the house first - that way if I didn't like it from the front, I wouldn't have painted the entire house already.

I liked that idea, so Brent and I spent a few hours on a Saturday evening and a few more the next morning painting the front.  Luckily, our house is small so it only took us about 4-6 hours total to paint the front, including the trim.  And we love it!!

We are most surprised to see the texture of the siding come out.  When the house was the lighter color, it was painted in a flat finish - which made it impossible to clean off muddy puppy paw prints and other smudges.  For the navy, we went with a satin finish which is why you can see more of the texture.  For the trim, we used Benjamin Moore Steam, which is a little bit softer than a bright white. 

Before we started painting, I was nervous about what our white gutter downspouts would look like on the front of the house, since before they blended in with the lighter paint.  But after painting with the BM Hale Navy and putting the downspouts back up, I think they look fine.

I love how our window trim and green plants pop out against the new house color.  But now our poor neighbors have to live with this view until our schedule clears out and we can paint the rest of the house!

And then there's this lovely view - oh man - we feel so trashy having a multi-colored house but I'm hoping that next weekend I can get the sides painted!

And for a final side by side - here's the before and after!  I am still undecided about the front door color and what, if anything, we'll do there.  Shutter options are still being weighed as well - but we'll worry about those once all the painting is done. 

And for your Pinning pleasure, here are all of the colors listed in one place.

Kruse vs Rabbit

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We live in a beautiful neighborhood with historic homes, mature trees and friendly neighbors.  We also live with an abundant rabbit problem.  Is it like this everywhere?  The only other place we've lived was in Omaha, NE and I don't recall seeing this many rabbits there.  My biggest complaint about these rabbits is the amount of my foliage they eat.  Spending money on new plants is mostly a no-no around here because the rabbits will chew them down to the ground in no time.

My parents live on an acreage where they also deal with a large rabbit population.  I'm afraid my children thought rabbits were actually called d@mn rabbits because that's what my mom would always say when they had eaten more of her plants.

But this year is gonna be different.  If we can keep the rabbits out of the yard, we can attempt to grow a garden!  Growing a garden is high on our priority list...not because we need one more thing to take care of and maintain...but because we think it's important that we learn how to do it and more importantly, that our kids learn exactly where these vegetables come from.

If you've been a homeowner for any length of time, you know that each home improvement project is not just a one step deal.  It's a least a 10 step process that you have to complete before you even get to the project you WANT to do.  This one's no different.

Before we could think about planting a garden, we had to figure out how we were going to keep the rabbits out.  So we installed this metal mesh around our entire yard.  Well, almost...of course we need one last roll to finish up a few spots.  Basically, Brent just used his staple gun to tack the metal fencing to the wood fencing in 7 foot sections.  But even that wasn't easy!  As he was installing the metal fencing, he would find fence posts that were rotted and had to be dug out and replaced.

In the back corner of our yard, there is a gap in the fencing to accommodate this big shrub/tree - honestly, I don't know what it is, but it grows like crazy and we have to cut it back a few times each year.  Brent had to make this little fence to go around it because this is one of the prime entry spots for the rabbits.

After mostly completing the rabbit fence installation, we borrowed our neighbor's tiller to prepare a space for our garden.

Our neighbor (yes, the same one that gave us our workshop) gave us his garden he had built last year because his mom has a huge, bountiful garden a few blocks away that thrives because of adequate sunlight...making his small garden mostly unnecessary since his mom's produces enough to mostly feed the entire neighborhood.

We just took it apart in his yard and re-assembled it in ours.  After the photo below was taken, we also took his dirt from his old garden and moved it to ours in 5 gallon buckets.  Not a fun job - but it was free dirt and how can you say no to that?

With the garden installed and the rabbit fence up we are ready to plant.  Except we have to wait another month until it is warm enough to transplant our plants outdoors.

Here's the little growing operation we have going.  We realized that the warmest, sunniest spot in our house happened to be on the second floor 2 feet away from Brent and I's bed.  So most evenings as we drift off to sleep, there is a faint odor of wet dirt in the room.  Really romantic.

Try not to make fun of us if we're doing this whole "start from seed" thing wrong.  It's probably pretty obvious that we have no idea what we're doing, but we figured the best way to learn is by screwing it up a few times!

 Looks like one of these little guys isn't gonna make it!

I'm just really hoping that the majority of these plants transplant ok out to the real garden.  Growing these things from seed is a TON of work!  Major sad faces would be happening if they all die once they get into the garden.  Tips would be greatly appreciated in the comments.

Our Workshop Story

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During the summer of 2012, Brent and I were enjoying a relaxing evening on the porch with our neighbors, who also happen to be close friends of ours - literally...close.  As in, our houses are only about 10 feet apart.  They were talking about how they were planning to put a 2 car detached garage in their backyard the following summer, which is a huge asset in our neighborhood, as most homes in our part of town only have a one car garage.

Jokingly, we told them we would gladly take their existing one car detached garage off of their hands, as we could really use more storage space.  We all got a chuckle out of that, until we started thinking that maybe...possibly...it could actually be done.  At that time, our backyard had a small garden shed that was just big enough to hold our lawn mower and a few nests of rabbits under the foundation.

With Brent's carpentry skills and tool inventory increasing by the day, we knew that at some point, we were really going to need a more dedicated space to work on our projects.  The garage and the basement just weren't cutting it.  So we began dreaming about the possibilities of a real-life workshop.  With some convincing from my dad, we were assured that we could move our neighbor's one car garage from his yard right on over to our yard.  Without hesitation, we began putting plans in place to make that happen.

First, we poured a concrete foundation to set the workshop on.

Then, to prepare the garage to be moved, we removed the roof, windows and garage door.  The shingles obviously couldn't be re-used, but the wood slats that supported the roof would eventually become our soffit material.

On the day of the big move, we sweet talked a few friends into coming over to help.  The conversation went a little like this, "ahhhh...would you mind coming over Saturday morning to help us carry a building from our neighbors yard over to our yard?"  To do this, my dad apart the garage at each of the corners. 

 And we carried one wall at a time from our neighbor's yard to our new foundation.

 And stood the walls up onto bolts in the foundation.

 After less than 2 hours, the workshop was already beginning to take shape.

The rest of that first day was spent building new roof trusses...

Since this was no longer to be used as a garage, the door opening had to be much smaller...so we used some scrap material to frame up the new front face of the workshop.  By the end of the first day, we were already to the point you see below!  Little did we know how much work we still had ahead of us!
After framing in the roof, but before shingling, we decided to add a dormer using a panel of windows from the old garage door - you can see all about that process here.  Once the dormer had been installed, we began the agonizing task of shingling.

As Brent was busy framing in windows, I was attempting to salvage the exterior siding.  After scraping for a period of days and realizing I was getting no where FAST, we bit the bullet and spent about $300 to put all new siding on the shed.  No amount of paint was going to be able to make the old siding look good and boy are we glad that we re-sided the entire thing!

To prepare for the new siding, we ripped the existing siding off and framed in some additional windows.

Origianally, the garage only had two windows - one on each side.  We used the original two windows and relocated them to the front of the shop to flank the entrance doors.  As I was scouring Craigslist one day for materials, we found four additional unpainted wood windows for $20 each that just happened to match the original windows.  Adding two more windows to each side was going to majorly amp up our natural light situation.  And Brent and I had an agreement from the very beginning of this process...that if we were going to have this huge building in our backyard, it had to be adorable to look at.  Adding windows was an easy way to accomplish this.

New siding went up relatively quickly.

After the siding was installed, we used the original boards that came from the roof to build the soffits.

Craigslist windows got a coat of paint...

The siding got two coats of paint in a color called Organic Cotton, which matches our house.

We added some planting beds and mulch around the exterior to prevent mud from splashing onto the workshop when it rained - since we didn't have any gutters at this point.

After considering a lot of options, we were ultimately undecided about what to do with the front of the shed.  Stairs, a deck, a pathway...so at this point we decided that a small, inexpensive deck would work for us for a few years until we found a more permanent solution for the entrance to the shop.

I built shutters for each of the windows for less than $5 each.  Here's a simple tutorial to build them.

The double doors on the front of the workshop came from our local Habitat for Humanity REStore, for a total of only $80!

And by the time it was starting to get chilly out in the fall of 2013, we officially had a shed!  Keep in mind that at this point, it does not have electricity or heat so over the winter, we simply used the shed as cold storage.

After a long winter, spring arrived and we were motivated to continue our work on the shed.  The deck got a coat of stain...

Flower boxes were built, here's a tutorial for building them.

 Lights were installed above the front windows...

 And additional plants went in.

Whew...I'm exhausted and we've barely begun to work on the INSIDE!!  Good thing we aren't in any sort of hurry to wrap this up!

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