House Renovations!

I'm slightly embarrassed by how long this particular makeover has taken. We wanted to start by taking out all of the plants in the front of the house because they were way too overgrown for a bungalow-style home like ours (bungalow=fancy word for "ranch"...which just makes me think of a farm... nothing against farms, of course).

Well, turns out I was a little over-eager to start the whole process (shocker), and decided to have my mom and Charlie come to rip out all of the plants with me this summer while I wasn't working. Charlie also helped us with the start of our major backyard makeover when we first bought the house.

My thinking was that the plants had to come out before the paint went up, which would happen after the porch/"stoop" (Someone has got to come up with a better word for this. "Portico" isn't any better.) was built. SO... why not just rip them up while I was not working?! Makes total sense, right?!

Except that was in July, and it's now October. Technically this whole thing was finished last weekend, but still, two months with no plants in the front of your yard is awkward.

Part of that time (quite possibly an entire month) there was an unpainted "stoop", but still.

They matched the wood on the stoop to the wood on the left side of the house to make it look original. 

They also took out the light to the left of the door and installed this hanging light.

In the back, they replaced the metal awning (that had to have been put up when the house was built 70 years ago) with a more official looking one.

So once that was finished, it was time to decide on a paint color. Mercy.

Who knew picking out a paint color would be so stinking HARD?!

Thank goodness for my more logical, better half. I had a color picked out three weeks ago and decided I wanted the house painted before the weekend. Then Matt asked me (in a way that only he can do),

"Why are we wanting to have it done by this weekend?"

To which I replied, "Because then we can start the week with a painted house!".

Yeah- I realized as I said it that it the confidence in my response didn't change the fact that it was a stupid reason.

So we took another week or so to really look at colors and find one we really liked.

We had narrowed it down to these two paint swatches and were actually carrying them around with us when we spotted a house we really liked. So we walked up to it and knocked on the door to ask the people if they knew the name of their color- is that weird?!

Maybe so, because they didn't answer.

So we held the two cards up to the door and decided which color from our swatches matched the closest. And we decided it was this one:

Software 7074

We were originally looking at dark gray shutter colors, but decided to go with black to match the roof and kept the trim white.

They also painted our little picket fence white.

Matt posing with the new light fixture because I couldn't remember if I got a picture of it or not. ;)

So who did we end up using for these projects?!

Our original contractor who renovated our entire house when we first bought it was booked for two months, and although he offered to make some space in his schedule for us, we decided we would try a new guy who is a family friend of my parents.  His name is Larry Price, and he and his team were GREAT!

For the painters, we used a guy recommended by Larry named Sergio Carreno. He came out to quote the day after I called him and he and his team had the entire house completed in three days (one day to pressure wash and two days to paint) once we finally decided on a color. ;)

If you're local to Atlanta and are looking for contractors or painters, I'd be happy to share their information with you! Just shoot me an email at notesftn@gmail.com.


Up next on the to-do list is planting some low-growing plants in the front yard so that it doesn't look so bare!

For our other house renovations and yard projects, click here.