The house Exterior is done [for now]

Well my friends. It has been a long summer of exterior renovations. What we thought would be an eight-week project turned into a 17-project. Guys weren't showing up, things weren't getting done. I was grumpy. #firstworldproblems. Yes I know. But we made it through the other side of the long tunnel and I'm here to show you the final(ish) product. There are still some things to do and some things we need to address, but more on that later. First: the before pics!

This is where we started. We had lots of white siding and pardging as well as stairs that were falling apart. Also, you can't see it, but there is also about 3-inches of water hanging out on the roof right over Mila's bed so the roof was first to be addressed.

A photo posted by Stephanie Fazio (@lealoulemonade) on Apr 14, 2015 at 4:24pm PDT

This was the back during renos. You can also see pics of the original back here:

And here is the after.

We went with a Maibec wood siding in Pepperwood and chose StoneRox Cobblestone in Meaford Mist. The stone is my favourite part of the whole reno. We wanted an old stone look and we're super happy with the result.

Half-way through we decided to add stone and shakes to the garage as well. We still need to paint the door and the side trim.

As I mentioned we still need to address a few things. We want to paint out the windows. As soon as the siding went up we realized that the white windows washed out the colour a bit. We also need to address those darn arches on the porch. The red brick makes the siding look too green to me. We might clad them in something next year but we're going to live with them for now. 

Also next spring we'll be tackling the landscaping. We'll have to re-lay the front stone walkway and put replace all the plants in the front. We also have plans to redo the west-side walk way. All in due time. For now I'm happy to get another major reno done in the books.

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House exterior progress

A photo posted by Stephanie Fazio (@lealoulemonade) on Apr 14, 2015 at 4:24pm PDT

If you follow me on Instagram, I asked the Internet what we should do with the exterior of our house. You see... our house is very white. It has old white siding on the upper portion and white shoddy parging on the bottom. In all honesty it never really bothered me but it has bothered Mark for a long time and this year he decided it was time to do something about it.

His way of doing something goes as follows: Research the bazookas out of a project for months (or years in this case) and then suddenly pull the trigger. He pulled the trigger this time by taking apart the front stairs and pulling out all of the plants and then pulling off the parging in the back to expose pretty lath and plaster.

Ok so I guess we're doing this then?

Soon the house looked like this and I felt like I was living in a weird '80s horror movie.

A photo posted by Stephanie Fazio (@lealoulemonade) on Apr 28, 2015 at 10:27am PDT

Cut to today and we have made a bit of progress.

Here's what we've done:

• The roof had to be done so that was done first. Apparently we had three inches of water sitting on the roof over Mila's room. The roof was brown and is now black (no pic).
• We decided to stucco the sides of the house where some old parging was falling apart. The stucco really cleaned everything up.
• We discovered that the front of the house was hanging on by a thread under the white parging. When our handyman started working on it, it was moving around so basically he had to take all the parging off, along with the first layer of brick and re-brick the front and sides of the porch on the right. We're going to be putting stone on the base so it doesn't matter what the brick looks like as long as it's sturdy (hence the two colours of brick).
• We also decided to stucco the caps of the porch to clean them up and create a continuous line. You'll notice in the before picture at the top, there's a break in the cap right under the brick arches and we wanted to fill it in.
• We added a stucco ledge to the side and back of the house. The stone will go under and new siding will go above. It doesn't look level but believe me it is! (Arg old houses!).

Here's what's left to do:

• Install stone the front and back bottom walls.
• Install siding and shakes to the front on the top (the shakes will go in the peak) and install siding on the back of the house. This will include the window frames. We're going with a light grey/brown siding.
• Install two new windows on the far northeast side of the house.
• Rebuild the stairs which will include new stone ledges and caps.
• Later on we'll likely add big stones to the front garden and put some of our plants back!

So that's what's been going on around here. 

Oh and guess what I decided to do before all this work started... host an outdoor wedding shower for my sister! I think I'll be embracing a rustic look ;).