Exterior updates!

Our house is finally to the point where it looks like a house you could live in! Our roof, or roofs I should say, were installed a few weeks ago, and our painters have just about wrapped up the exterior work. The only thing left on the exterior painting agenda is to coat all of the exterior doors in black paint. Unexcitingly, yet importantly, our septic system is about 80% completed.

Since we are on a budget, we decided to do a combination of metal and shingle roofing. Farmhouses typically have metal roofs, but this feature can cost up to three times as much as a shingle roof. Since we really wanted to stay true to the modern farmhouse feel, we chose to use metal roofing on our accent and porch roofs, and use a coordinating architectural shingle on the main house to save money. I love the look of traditional galvanized metal roofing, but am not a big fan a gray shingles, so we ruled this option out pretty quickly. After much pinteresting and roof debating, we decided to go with black shingles and matte black metal. Black suited the “modern” part of our farmhouse well, and seemed to be the best option when combining different roofing materials.

Staying in line with the farmhouse theme, we decided to paint the exterior of the house white – trim and all. For an indecisive person such as myself, it was very convenient that I just needed to pick one exterior color instead of two. I can’t deny that I still spent quite a bit of time picking the white paint for our siding and trim, but the fact that Benjamin Moore’s color of the year for 2016 was “Simply White” helped sway me to go with this color. If you haven’t dealt with selecting paint for a project, you may be thinking that white is just white. Let me tell you, IT’S NOT. There are a plethora of whites out there ready to make your mind crazy. Blue whites, pink whites, yellow whites, white whites, gray whites, and the list goes onnnnnnnnnnnn. Simply White is a soft white that is not too bright or too yellow, which happens to be just what I was looking for!

Here is where we are at now:

Though the house is looking good, our property is currently a HOT MESS. Our front yard is coated in rocks (that luckily provide our children with minutes of entertainment at a time) and accented with a huge mound of sand. The back yard has septic trenches and trash galore. Fortunately this is all about to change. Within the next two weeks our septic system will be completed and buried, and the hardscape portion of our landscaping will begin. Due to the sloping nature of our lot, we are having LOTS of retaining walls installed. Along with the retaining walls, the landscapers will install large planter beds along the front of the house, steps to our front porch (hallelujah), a herringbone paved sidewalk and planter beds and steps along the lower level back porch.

As soon as the retaining walls and hardscapes are installed, our POOL will begin! We have gone back and forth on this topic, and ultimately decided that if we are ever going to put one in, it should be now.  Aside from the cost, I think the biggest downside to having a pool put in is the huge mess it makes of your property. Since our back yard looks like a dump, there didn’t seem like a better time than now to make it dumpier! I am SO excited that I don’t have to use the creek as relief from the heat. I love looking at the creek, but that is where I draw the line. While Trent and Conleigh were swimming in it last weekend, I spotted a snake swimming their way TWO times. This helped solidify the fact that we needed a pool.

Along with exterior progress, the inside of our house has come a long way too. All of our drywall has been installed, taped, floated and textured. Our tile guy started Thursday and our trim carpenter will begin installing all of our trim and doors this week. Once the trim is done, we will be ready for interior paint! I am still finalizing the interior color scheme, but plan to write a post when I am done torturing myself on the subject 😜.

Happy Saturday, everyone!