Home Facelift a Creative Way to Add Curb Appeal

My husband Bret and I are HUGE Do-It-Yourselfers. We have saved many pennies over the years taking on this role as a hobby.  We love to line up multi-phased project goals, budget for supplies, plan designs, shop best prices, make relevant purchases, saw, assemble, hammer, paint, photograph and feel the sense of accomplishment which accompanies each finished result.  We've been embarking on journeys of this kind since we rented our first apartment together 25 years ago.

This past year, we took several steps toward finishing an exterior house facelift which began with an idea and a replacement of exterior lighting a few years back.  The idea was to bring more of a cottage look to our suburban home--complementing the gardens and sprinkling more of a playful joy into the curb appeal. Here are before and after pictures to show the transformation:

Curious as to how we did it? Another thing we both like to do is share helpful hints on what we've learned from our experiences in case others would like to do something similar, so here's the answer--or list of answers--to this question... 

After the lighting fixtures, we knew we wanted to replace our front door with a higher efficiency upgrade, so found a door to match our cottage flavor, and used the old door as a template to chisel out the hinge-areas, as shown here:

Spending every night after work for a week--obsessing online to find the ideal door knocker--yielded this fun friendly guy (plus a doorbell to match) to cheerfully greet our guests.  

A quick resewing and gathering of a set of curtain panels on pre-existing rods in the windows flanking the door--plus a cushion and pillows to spruce up an existing bench we repainted, and concrete stain on the stoop and steps--helped finish the front porch area from the outside. On the inside, we wanted to continue the storybook feel...

so we brought in red-orange whimsical rugs to match the existing orange art glass candle holders on an iron stand in the front entry, then hand-made a wreath to tie the red, orange and green palate together. The ribbon for the bow on the wreath was chosen to match the curtains on either side of the door.  

Then we also added a fun sign made with craft letters, glitter and a unique frame as shown.  BRet + INgra = BRIN Cottage!

Our first step for the overall exterior was to design a trim addition to add more of a cottage flavor, so I played on PhotoShop and we landed on a plan.  

Once we got all the trim cut and nailed up, we decided to cover the seam where the pieces met with a wooden version of a keystone. By the way, many don't know it really is "we" when I tell these stories--I always appreciate Bret allowing me to play Ingra-the-builder on occasion with his saw.  I enjoy doing something different every day, and he's a willing mentor in the power tools area!  

Once the trim and keystones were up, we wanted to find a paint closer to the taupe color I thought I had chosen when we first built the house 12 years ago.  For some reason, "light taupe" turned out to be "pale pink" once it was sprayed onto our house!  

Once we found the right shade of taupe, we played with different shades of burgundy, brown and plum for a trim color. We found a deep plum to be just the right fit--matching hues in the front door and drawing pink, burgundy and plum colors from surrounding plants in the front gardens.

A final touch on the front of the house was the inclusion of iron hinges and handles on the garage doors.  We've been taking our three dogs for Saturday morning rides through the Shadow Lake housing development in Papillion for the past several years to watch new houses being built, and have really liked the carriage door ironwork many of the homes are using, so we incorporated those in our cottage makeover.

The final project in this multi-phased transformation was to add an attached pergola to the south side of the house.  This has always been such a blank-looking side and it's the first thing folks see when they drive up, so we purchased a couple 4" x 4" pre-cut finial fence posts and cut them down to flank a box which holds a line of double-beveled spindles we cut in half for the top.  We finished the other end of the post by adding another finial, and used the cut-off portion as an angle brace. After playing with placement, we decided to line up the bottom of the pergola with the bottom of the front garage trim.

We've found the shadows this added structure makes at different times of the day to be an interesting aesthetic addition to a once bland view of the house. This project was a risk of sorts because we've never seen it done on the side of a house--only on the front over the garage--but we're very tickled with the results and are happy it worked out so well!

I hope sharing this journey has provided some ideas about how small changes here and there can add up to a fun facelift over time. It's always exciting to see folks working on their homes and gardens in some way. I personally feel it shows good stewardship of what God has entrusted in our care, and I hope it's also a favor to neighbors who have our home as their view!

Today's Quote:
"You can't use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have."
-- Maya Angelou