Dull to Delightful!

So I am so happy to say that we are finally finished with not only the interior painting of our home but now the exterior and we could not be happier with the transformation. It is incredible how much a little yard work and some paint can transform your house and really add major curb appeal.

Now for the photos!

Our home when we purchased it in October 2011:

Here is our newly painted home now!!!

Does it look a little different? Just a bit!  Hopefully in a good way :) Here are just a few of the changes we made to the front of the house over the last few weeks!

Our previous entryway- October 2011

Entryway now:

Back of our house before:

And her it is now- LOVE the windows trimmed out it makes it look so much bigger!

Side of house before:

 And now:

Other Side before:

and after:

Terry and could not be happier about the new paint job on our house. It really does make it stand out in the neighborhood now and you actually notice it when you drive through. We are just so pleased with the new look. If anyone is interested our painter used Sherwin Williams Duration paint and the main blue color is called Distance- SW6243 and and the trim is called Classic Light Buff- SW0050.

Now its time for some much needed R&R! I think we will spend the rest of our summer kicking back out on our porch enjoying a few bottels of wine and hopefully some warmer weather!

The exterior house painting has finally begun!

W have been waiting all month to get nice weather so we could get the exterior of our home painted...and have not really had any but on Friday last week they were able to paint the body color on the entire house. I came home from work and was just SHOCKED at the transformation that was made to our home. They still have the trim to paint it looks amazing. Now I am just hoping that we have a dry day this week so they can paint the trim before our open house party this Saturday. They also have one more window to trim out. Here is a shot of the windows trimmed out. This is before the new paint job was done. The trim will eventually be painted an off white color. I was just shocked how much this adds to the house. It makes the windows look so much better and bigger. I am very excited to see it all completed. Hopefully next week I will reveal our freshly painted house!

Terry and I are just thrilled at the fact that we do not have any other painting projects planned for our house. At this point we are totally and completely painted out. Yes, we have accomplished a TON and transformed our house into a home of our own in just 7 short months! We would probably do it all over again (maybe not as quickly) but it feels so good to not have to be cleaning, taping & painting. Then getting paint all over our clothes, hair, skin. We are looking forward to not having to clean another paint brush, bucket or roller for a very long time to come! Looking forward to relaxing the rest of the summer and enjoying our house!

Cheers!

Bold Bright Changes!

So I was going to wait to reveal our front door makeover until after our house was painted but I just couldnt. We have been a bit delayed because of the weather but it will hopefully it will be done in the coming weeks! SO while we have been waiting we decided we wanted to paint our front door before they painted the exterior of the house. So over Memorial Day weekend we transformed our front door and entryway from a dark and unwelcoming area to something bright fresh and new! Here is how the process went.

Here is how our front door looked before.

When we started in on this process we needed to give this door a good sanding. So after we removed the hardware. Terry had the fun job of sanding this sucker. It was just a little dusty!

Then he cleaned off the dust with some paint thinner and rubbed the de-glosser product onto the areas he couldn't get with the sander.

After that he caulked around the door waited for the to try over night and started the priming process the next day. I believe that we did 2 coats of the Zinsser oil based stain blocking primer. It was a huge transformation just priming the door white! Brightened it up a lot! 

We decided to paint our front door a light yellow color. I know some of you will absolutely hate it but we absolutely love it! We originally wanted to paint the door a red color but everyone is doing that nowdays. Don't get us wrong we love a good red door but we wanted to be different. We feel like our entryway is kind of dark to begin with and what better way to brighten it up than with a bright cheery yellow!

So here is how the door looks now! Please ignore the over painting and the missing shutters. Again we are painting the house so this will disappear. The house will soon be painted a dark blue with a white trim!

Front door before and after photos:

So stay tuned in the coming weeks for photos of our newly painted house as well as a few updates to the exterior that will make our home look much nicer too.  We are just so excited!

Time to paint the house!

So one of our MAJOR painting projects is coming up...the exterior painting of our home. We are so excited for this and planning and scheming on what color we want to paint it. Since we feel now like the dull grey blue and dark blue trim are boring and doesn't make the house have much curb appeal. We decided that we want to do a dark blue with a bright white trim and I really really really wanted a light yellow front door. Originally we were going to go with a red front door but I feel like everyone is doing that right now. Don't get me wrong I think red doors are incredibly beautiful and love them but I just wanted to be different. Plus the front entry way to our house doesn't get much light so adding the light yellow door we feel will really brighten the place up and make it more welcoming :)

So we have gone back and forth over hiring someone to do the work for us while we focus on finishing up painting everything else inside our house. Even though we would be paying more money to hire someone! They would have in done in a matter of days and we would have to take a week off of work and pray for nice weather and bust our behinds!! Not saying we are not up for a good painting challenge....Lord knows we are not afraid to slap some paint on something! We recently contacted about 3-4 painting companies and are waiting for the bids to come back in. Then we will try to add up the cost of us doing it all ourselves and make a decision. While we have been waiting on that I have found a few programs that would let us mock paint our house to see what colors we like. Below is a photo from the KellyMoore site of a basic house with the colors we want to use. We were told to pick from their list of "Stock" colors. I guess the have lots of it premixed at the store and it also lasts longer on your house. The main blue stock color is called called "Night Sky" the trim will be a stock white called "Swiss Mocha" then I photo shopped in a yellow door just so you can see what our overall vision is.

Then I took a recent photo of our house and painted it on another online paint program that Sherwin-Williams offers on line for free you just need to upload a photo of your house and manually draw out the areas you want painted and select the colors. The color I choose was as close as I could get to the KellyMoore color we want to use.

So what do you think of our choice? Doesn't it make the house look SOOO much nicer and modern? We are super excited to get this process started and see the finish product. Hopefully we will start the painting in the next month! We wanted to have it painted before our open house party in June! Stay tuned everyone for the BIG reveal on this one!