Outer Beauty

Remember this post about the exterior siding? Well...last week we had a whole crew of people here working to get it done! 'Done' is a relative term, though. The area around our front door is still just covered in house wrap and we don't have the new front overhang trimmed out yet...BUT it was great progress none-the-less.

Here's a little sneak peek of the outside. We'll have to wait until it's warmer to get everything painted but at least the primed hardie looks better than the peeling wood did!

Here comes the crew...our front yard started looking like a truck dealership. :)

We have a 3-seasons porch at the back of the house that we are hoping to convert to a fully conditioned space (a 4-seasons porch, I guess?) and the first step was to get rid of one whole wall of windows so we could get more insulation in there. Windows are now gone...

And wall is put up so it can be sided on the outside...

Here's what that looked like from the outside. Someday we'll have a different configuration for the windows you can still see as we replace them all.

Another view of the back of the house in progress.

And here's the front of the house. Under the old siding was this black papery stuff. Call me crazy...but I really liked the look of the house when this black stuff was exposed. Maybe a black painted house will be in our future???

 Here are the new little roof extensions we had built and the mix of shakes and flat siding.

And the back of the house again. We can't help but start planning out our new deck that will wrap around the back of the house from the kitchen door (the one you see near the center of the picture below) and extend to the end of the enclosed porch.

And just to give you a little perspective so you can visualize the layout of the inside...our master bedroom is where the double windows are on the lower level. (we've had many conversations about turning the windows into french doors so we can walk outside from the master) Then the girls' bedroom is the set of double windows you see on the upper level. The boys' bedroom is the smallest window you see right above the porch roof.

Now we 'just' have to get the outside painted, and get some gutters put on...as well as trim out the front. Every little step gets us closer to seeing the whole thing come together!