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exterior makeover help

last year

Hi

We are hoping to freshen up the exterior of our house. We will be replacing the deck and stairs with a slightly larger cedar deck. The front door will be replaced with a more modern black door with one sidelight. Eventually we will paint house but for now I was thinking of painting the trim black or charcoal ? The lilac tree split and will need to be replaced. Any recommendation are appreciated

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Comments (5)

heather641
Original Author
last year
I forgot to add we are removing the door behind the lilac tree!
grapefruit1_ar
last year
I think that a professional landscape/ hardscape plan would be the best place to start. Removing the pavers, creating a planting area by the foundation, adding a railing to the stairs, removing the tree in front of the ” door”, and removing extraneous items in view would be great changes. When I hear the word ” deck” I envision the back of the house.

I cannot see the stairs clearly so perhaps they could be concrete?
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I just completed a remodel on the exterior of my house which, before the remodel, looked a lot like yours (including the sloping down one side). Like yours, my house also had a long and narrow front porch with lots of columns. I started by going through Houzz’s extensive collection of front porches and pulling out the ones that had elements that I liked. I found that I liked front porches with a larger front door (with side lights), a gabled porch cover that extended slightly from the house, and chunkier bottoms on the columns (especially ones clad with stone or brick). I also pulled the entire porch out by about six feet and adding stone flower boxes all the way down the entire front of the house. This helped with the weird fall away on the one side. Like you I added shutters, but unlike you, I added them to both the upper and lower windows on my house. I also changed out the very dated and energy inefficient windows on the first floor. As you can see from the before and (mostly) after pics below. Unfortunately, the new windows on the house were added after these pictures so they are not reflected here (I’m actually waiting for spring before I take a new set of pictures), but I hope you get the idea of what was accomplished. Btw, I own an architectural sheet metal company which drove the decisions for the columns and metalwork on the porch. I also added some lighting so the porch also looks amazing at night.
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Wow, you house is almost all brick. A lovely color at that. I would struggle to suggest a color, because I don't think it will be an improvement. Sorry. What ever paint was used on the back dormer is washing down on the brick. Maybe you can clean it off the brick and paint the dormer with a new paint meant for the outside. Khakii or light tans look really good with brick. Think about painting the clapboards and all of the trim. Prune the azaleas and other foundation plants. They are way too tall and are hiding your charming house. Maybe redo the planting of the slope so it isn't all ground cover. Paint the front door an interesting color.
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One thing I like about the planter is it gives a long, level baseline for plants, rather than your slope. I'd try to keep it, or reconstruct something similar. It doesn't look like you have enough width there to do shrubs, so plant it with soft/easy perennials like the decorative switchgrasses (the shorter ones, not the taller varieties), rudbeckia, shorter goldenrods, etc. Cut them all to the ground in spring just before growing season -- simple. The shrubs along the side of the drive look like they might be nice to keep, just need a little weeding. I don't know about adding a fence behind them. If you keep most of them a fence would not be visually necessary. I like a nice generous landing. Could yours be extended out along the house, maybe to just beyond the first set of windows? Looks like you can't go out into the drive much, or you'd interfere with cars using the garage. For paint colors, I like a nice bright front door. Just about any color would work for yours. I also like it when the garage doors and side doors are painted to blend in rather than stand out. So I'd choose a medium tan-ish color. Again, let the front door be the thing that draws the eye, not the garage doors or side door.
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I dont usually like bricks painted, but, in your case, I would buy some paint especially for brick. Romabio. And I would color match the paint to your shakes, so house body is all one color. It looks very chopped up right now.
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P.D. Schlitz
last year
The concrete planter around your tree is an interesting (and assumedly original?) feature, but nothing else in your landscape “talks” to it so to speak. With midcentury homes I think ‘poured-in-place’ concrete always looks good— it’s not that different from your paver idea, just at a more appropriate scale & function. Here’s a really bad rendering done with a fat thumb on my phone, but the gist would be to have larger rectangular concrete sections (could be gravel or grass in between) that abut your concrete planter, and having those surrounded by some nice native grasses with a another planted section in the middle, and then echo those same plants in your raised concrete planter around tree). Neat house!
heather641
Original Author
6 months ago
@P.D. Schlitz. Thank you so much for your suggestions! We used your ideas as a jumping off point and came up with this… btw we added the concrete planter after removing a couple large trees
P.D. Schlitz
6 months ago
Oh wow— that really looks amazing! Thanks so much for posting an update, what a transformation. And you’re much too kind in crediting me with anything, as clearly you all had a vision that far and away surpassed the elementary school drawing I shared 😂. Love the house color, yard, concrete work, all of it— am guessing you’re getting lots of compliments from the neighbors and passers-by!

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