The Exterior Makeover (from blah to YAY!)

A few weeks ago I read this post on one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love.  They repainted their door this beautiful, bright, and lively blue color (called Blue Lake by Benjamin Moore).  I. WAS. SOLD.

I mean, literally within a week I had gone to Benjamin Moore and repainted.

But let's start with the before picture shall we?

So before we moved in the house was dark.  VERY dark.  I mean, here in Arkansas we have so many trees that light inside a house is a luxury.  So we always knew we wanted to lighten it.  We originally painted the door a grayish blue.  It looked ok. But it definitely didn't transform the house like we wanted.  When I saw the Blue Lake color, it started a bit of a ... well ... transformation of sorts.

Here's the door after I painted it AND after I had my husband remove the storm door.  The front door is super protected so the storm door really isn't needed.  A diy trick we've learned is to use your neighbors for observation.  We realized the vast majority of our neighbors didn't have storm doors and we have one of the largest porches, so even more protection.  A couple hours later, the storm door was off and it started looking a little better.

But we weren't done yet!  After much pinterest pinning and looking, I came up with this:

We started with the columns ...

I wanted to paint the columns.  My husband wasn't too sure if he agreed or not.  He thought it would look strange to have the dark gray contrast so much. But he's a sweety and agreed to try it.  The columns are White Dove by Benjamin Moore. The second we did it, we saw a huge difference.  We started getting a vision.  Our pocket books started burning, but we knew it was worth it.

But obviously one thing we really needed to do was clean up the damage from taking the storm door off.  With patience, wood filler, and caulk when needed we prepped to make sure it would look great.

And here we are today! :)  I love the door.  I mean, it is so welcoming, so fun, and just wonderful.  The door paint is blue lake by benjamin moore and the trim is white dove by benjamin moore.  We bought the mat at Target.  One little thing I've learned --- get a BIG mat!  Most porches (unless you're in an apartment) require a bigger mat than your average size.  They're only $2 more and actually fit the space.

But remember how I said our pocketbooks started hurting?  Well, after we had this done we knew we couldn't stop, so we hired painters to do the rest of the house.  They were AWESOME (if anyone in Arkansas needs a painter, email me and I can give you the name.  We were VERY happy and as much as I like to joke, they were very reasonably priced).  So in a couple days, our house looked like this ...

I'm not gonna lie.  I was pretty panicked those 3 days.  Ladders, taller ladders, and spraying, oh my!  But when they left, we knew it was a great idea.  The house color is Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore (and so is the garage -- which we painted ourselves).

The hubby & I painted as much of this as we possibly could to save on money so we did the columns, front door, porch ceiling and trim, shutters, and the garage.  It was probably close to 20-30 hours of work on our part and it took us about 5 days ... thank goodness for great daughters that played in the kiddie pool or took naps at the same time, or played in the playroom in the front lawn so we could do it!  The painter said the work probably saved about $700, so worth it for us!

And today ... here we are!

Wait wait ... let's look at a before again:

And now! :)

So much better right?  To recap colors, main body is revere pewter, columns are white dove, door is blue lake, and shutters are hale navy (all by Benjamin Moore ... I'm obsessed with BM paints).

As you can see, we also put some fun goodies on our porch!  All our porch furniture is from Garden Ridge - the swing, rocking chairs, and bench.

This is one of my favorite makeovers ... the view from the porch.  It's just so inviting.  The porch ceiling is Quiet Moments (by BM).

I painted the bench a really light blue color from BM (can't remember the name!  I think it was the lightest color on the swatch with blue lake on it) and we bought a couple cute cushions at this random rug store! ha!  We have spent SO much time reading, chatting, sharing drinks etc on this porch.  It's our family hangout, and we love it.

And there you have it! :)  I'm so in love with it all.  All the work is always worth it ... in all these big projects just have to say "it'll be worth it, just keep swimming!"