Like I said a few posts back, we’re in the process of changing the exterior of our house.  The top priority is our roof.  Back in April, we had a pretty severe hail storm that damaged our roof and some of our gutters.  Thanks to good homeowners insurance, we’re pretty well covered to have a full roof replacement.  At the same time, we also have a few lingering exterior issues that have been on the to-do list – most important being fixing some of the soffits (that’s the underside of the roof overhang) that a few birds have taken a liking too.  We’re also going to be fixing some gutters and hopefully solving some water/ice issues we’ve had in the past.

We’ve also known for a while that our house needs a new paint job.  Don’t get us wrong, we’re not trying to go overboard – we know this is a lot to take on at once!  And we knew it would need to happen within a few years of when we bought our house in 2009, so we’ve been mentally prepared  and having conversations about it for a while.  But, that doesn’t mean we have a CLUE what our house will look like on the other side of all of this!  Ha!

We’ve taken many walks around town looking at similar Victorian homes, googled endlessly, and considered paying for a professional color consult!  I’ve even spent some time fiddling around with virtual painting on various websites.  And yet, we still are more confused than ever about what colors to choose.  Since we’re hoping it will last a long time, we want it to be JUST RIGHT, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

Call us color confused if you want, but we’re truly at a loss.  I’d love to enlist your help!  Here’s a recent photo of the front of our house.

Our house currently has 2 siding colors (the top scalloped gable is a bit lighter than the main siding) and 4 trim colors (white, plum, a darker grey blue that you can see best on the front steps, and a lighter shade that’s on the soffits that is close to the main siding color).  And then, of course, we have the red roof

At some point, we may get rid of the enclosed porch and have pillars and a railing, which would be more period appropriate, but for now it stays.  One big constraint we have is our windows.  Some genius thought it would be perfect to replace all the beautiful functional wood windows with cheap vinyl ones.  Thus, we cannot paint the sashes of our windows except for the fixed pain windows on the third floor, and even then, it’s only the smaller rectangular ones.  Because of this, and because new windows are not in our new future (even though we’d LOVE to do it) the window sashes will have to stay white.  This bums me out since Victorian homes look BEAUTIFUL with painted sashes.  *sigh*

Other constraints we have in terms of color scheme: we don’t want all white since two of our neighbor’s homes are white.  And if we go more neutral/tan, we’d like to jazz it up with some fun trim.  Other than that, we’re pretty open to ideas!

We’re also quite happy to ditch the red roof, even though it is helpful when giving directions to friends.

If you have ideas, please let me know!  For now, here’s a few fun inspirational pictures we’ve found that have some color schemes we like.  In general, I think we’re gravitating towards greens, blues, and grayish colors for the main color.

Porch is for the house below.

Another angle of the same house…

It’s time for another edition of Weekend Planning!  I neglected to share my plans last week, and frankly, I can’t remember if I actually got anything done.  Whoops.  Hopefully this time around, sharing it with you will help keep me accountable!
House:

- Put the hide-a-bed away in the basement (something that should have been done 2 weeks ago!)

- Find a selection of (cheap) hardware for our downstairs bathroom – we need knobs, toiled paper holder, and towel bar.

- Continue researching paint options for our dining room and living room

- Research how to make small repairs on plaster walls (anyone have experience?)

- Make hummus for lunches next week

- Sweep and mop the kitchen floor (it’s been neglected in my daily chores)

Personal:

- remove batteries and memory card from my camera and package it to send on Monday to Chicago for repair

- Give myself an at-home facial

- Relax with DH before a crazy week begins!

How about you? What are your weekend plans?

In a tribute to the lovely All Things G&D blog (check it out!), I thought I’d title my post after my go-to-drink of choice during this room “renovation”.  I’m so sick of painting, it’s not even funny, but the Sierra Mist got me through it.  Touch ups and removal of the rest of the painters tape still needs to happen…but, here’s a looksie at the mostly finished product of one of the rooms.

My mom made this quilt for me – she started it when I was 14!  I picked out all of the fabric to match this bedroom set and this print I had of a ballerina.  It was her first quilt that she started, and it was really the gateway drug.  She is now a quilting FANATIC!  (Check out her blog here).  And it took her 12 years to finish   I received three other quilts before I received this one.  But it was worth the wait – most of it is hand-pieced, and the quilting is beautiful.  The fabrics and block design may not be my style any more, but it’s a labor of love for our guests to enjoy.

I’m going to put up some curtains/valances, and some art work.  I’ll also probably find some lamps at a thrift store.  And we need a new ceiling light.  Eventually I’ll get the headboard that is still at my grandparents house that matches the rest of the furniture, but that might be a long time from now.

But for now, at least it’s no longer a black hole with a football theme to it!  Remember the before with the sellers stuff?

Cute little boys room, but it had dark forest green paint on the ceiling and the top two feet of the wall.

Here’s the after again, same view.

So much brighter!  Yay!

This day isn’t very exciting, hate to disappoint.  Only exciting thing was all the crackers and Sierra Mist that went into it. 

This is one of the rooms halfway through the day.  I did a second coat of primer because you could still see the yellow and blue.  *sigh*

Here’s the other room with it’s full two coats of primer – exciting, right?

Don’t forget that in the middle of all this, I was packing up an entire house and slowly moving over to this one.  I’ve seriously lost track of what day of the week it is, and where my true home is (actually, I think Day #3 was Tuesday??? I can’t remember…)

And here’s one more to show you where we ended the day – which was LATE.  I did two coats of ceiling paint in the former green/tan room.

No, the room isn’t that lovely hazy yellow.  I’m just too lazy to run a Photoshop filter to get rid of the cast from the light.

The point is, look how great that ceiling now that it’s *ahem* white!