A Face Lift With a Suntan and Reader Advise Needed!

"It looks like it got a face lift and a suntan!", was the reaction of a friend after she drove by and saw the results of the power wash and new staining.  I have to agree.  It looks so much better!!

I have to admit though, since I see it everyday, the transformation doesn't seem as dramatic to me.  That's good and bad.  To me the progress seems slow and small at times.  But that is one reason I'm documenting all of this, so that in a year I can go back and see the dramatic changes.  Hopefully they will be more dramatic to me then.

Let's look at the exterior when we bought it:

I'm pretty sure the previous owner had this stained 30 years ago and then never did it again.  He stained it a dark cedar color which didn't really let the beauty of the cedar come through.  It also didn't allow for  the architecture of the house to be accentuated.  Everything blended together.

Since we had to push the power washing back due to the concrete going in first, it ended up taking much longer than we thought, but I'm glad.  Just power washing it lightened it up considerably.  Here are a few shots of that.

This first one you can see the power washed on the right  and the non-power washed on the left.

Here is the garage and part of the side of the house after it was power washed.  It looked so good I questioned staining it at all!

The original color I was going to do was called "Pecan".  The guy who stained it said that's all he ever does, but I didn't necessarily want "what everyone has" and when he put it up for me to see on a test piece, it did nothing for me.  It was just blah!  So after talking to him and thinking about it, we decided to add a bit of red.  I felt the house needed it to give it richness and depth.  I'm so glad I did.  I think it looks great and once the new trim color goes on, it will really make it pop!

Here is the house all done.  I will admit that photographing the front of this house is difficult because of the way the sun is.  The house faces north/south so the sun is always behind it a bit making it hard to get a shot that really brings out the architectural features of the front of the house.  But I can only do so much, right?

Now for the thing that has been keeping me up at night - literally!!  It seems like every night I have a dream about the trim color of this house.  We are having all the gutters, soffits, and fascia replaced next week and then in a few weeks I'm having all the trim around the windows and doors painted white.   I have taken my inspiration from homes like the following,

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I could give you way more, but you get the idea.  I absolutely LOVE the look.  But, now I'm second guessing myself that it's going to look dumb.  Like the house will look like a clown house or it will be too much.  This is where I need your input reassurance that everything will look great.  Because even I need a little bit of back up every now and then.  It's a huge leap of faith.  I may hate it.  It may look funny, but I know I'd regret it in some form if I didn't try it.  We shall know the results by the end of next week!!  You'll know how it went if you go to find Nutella and there is none to be found.  I will be in a Nutella coma somewhere in a dark corner.  

Let's hope it doesn't come to that!